Team:NCTU Formosa/Public Engagement

During summer, we have set up online meetups with many other iGEM teams to discuss our projects and also exchange advice to each other. It has been such a great time to share ideas with iGEMers all over the world and also a great time to seek collaboration opportunities. Moreover, we also have a lot of interesting conversations about our iGEM life ranging from countless experiment failures experiences to our dream as an iGEMer.

Team Abu Dhabi

Team Queens

Team Kazakhstan

Team HUST_China

Team NCKU

Team Tunghai

Team TokyoTech

Figure 1: Online meetups with teams around the world

High School Workshop

With the heart of spreading synthetic biology, we hosted a week-long workshop for high school students. During the workshop, we teach them useful research skills, experiment techniques, modeling concepts, and IoT practices. All in all, we wish to inspire these excellent kids to keep on pursuing the passion for science moreover synthetic biology. As a result, the workshop was a huge success. Our team has beautiful memories with the kids. For us, playing a role to teach, we receive much feedback towards our way of teaching and our project. In fact, it was our interaction with our students that we come up with the idea of constructing our biovisualization system.

Figure 2: Teaching high schools creating a simple model

NCTU x NTHU Conference

Towards the end of July, we attended an iGEM meetup with iGEM team NTHU Taiwan at the main hall of the NTHU library. It is an open place specially designed for stand-up speakers, where people can walk by and join. Our conference quickly caught people's eyes; some people even came and joined us during the middle of our presentations. After our presentation came the QA session. Together, we discovered some problems in both our projects and came up with solutions for solving them. After the conference, we have dinner together and kept on discussing our projects and how we can help each other, which then lead to our collaboration. Finally, shout out to NTHU Taiwan, hosting this excellent conference. We were fortunate that they approached us with this chance to know the deficiency in our project and hoped they benefitted as much as we did!

Figure 3: Group photo with iGEM team NTHU Taiwan

Taiwan iGEM Conference

At the beginning of August, iGEM team NCTU Formosa took a short trip to Taichung city to participate in the Taiwan iGEM conference held by NCHU Taichung. Featuring nine different teams coming from all over Taiwan. We received many constructive opinions from not only other team members but also teachers and advisors as well. From this, we were able to improve our content as well as our presentation style. We have a good time meeting up with these great iGEMers. Before we left, we had bonded with many other teams and schools and made long-lasting friendships. We can't wait to meet them again in Boston!

Figure 4: The poster section in Taiwan iGEM conference

NCTU Annual Biotechnology Fair

At this year's biotechnology fair in NCTU, we presented our project to future NCTU biotechnology majors to get them interested in synthetic biology. Every year, the event is held a few months before freshmen year starts as a way to give first-year students a glimpse at the many different paths available in the field. We showcase what we have learned in iGEM, and have many conversations with them. Looking at their sparkling eyes, we are sure many of them will become a member of iGEM team NCTU Formosa 2020.

Figure 5: The 2019 NCTU annual biotechnology fair

Bio-Tech Summer Camp

This summer, we are honored to have a lecture hour to introduce iGEM and synthetic biology to high school students attending NCTU Bio-Tech summer camp. With our great project from former iGEMers, we have blown their minds! Letting them realized biology could be applied in such an exciting way.

Figure 6: Introducing iGEM to high school students in Bio-Tech summer camp