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Education and Public Engagement

Life Hacks! 2.0

Life Hacks! 2.0 is a one-day outreach event organized in collaboration with Team NUS-Singapore to promote synthetic biology and bioentrepreneurship to pre-tertiary students. The event lineup includes a series of lectures by professors from local universities about how synthetic biology is solving real-world problems, a panel discussion between seasoned bioentrepreneurs, interactive games designed to expose students to various concepts and topics in synthetic biology and an iGEM project sharing session by both teams.

Promotional flyer for Life Hacks! 2.0

Getting ready for Life Hacks! 2.0

A continuation to the highly successful Life Hacks! 1.0 organised by the Team NUS_Singapore 2018, this year we have teamed up with greater ambition, to deliver Life Hacks! 2.0 on a larger scale! Prior to the event, we met Team NUS_Singapore in an earlier meeting and floated the idea of a collaborative educational event that we can deliver together. With an emphasis on the theme of synthetic biology and bioentrepreneurship, we worked out the groundwork and logistics of executing the event. The objective of Life Hacks! is to cultivate an interest and develop enthusiasm for synthetic biology in Singaporean pre-tertiary students. More than 70 students from various local polytechnics and junior colleges in Singapore signed up for the event. The event consisted of 3 components: a mini lecture series on synthetic biology, a panel discussion between bioentrepreneurs and fun interactive activities to inspire students to learn more about synthetic biology.

The event kicked off with mini lectures by keynote speakers Asst Prof Tan Meng How and Asst Prof Jimmy Peng. Asst Prof Tan Meng How is an Assistant Professor at the School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering in NTU, and the Principal Investigator leading Team NTU-Singapore. He discussed how synthetic biology involves taking an engineering approach to biology and its applications in research, therapeutics, food, energy and environment. He also discussed the promise and perils of synthetic biology, and how it can be misused. Asst Prof Jimmy Peng is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering in NUS, and the co-Principal Investigator leading Team NUS_Singapore. He introduced the integration of computer science into biology by viewing biological inputs as binary codes, with the simple example of regarding DNA bases as a string of ones and zeros. It was an overall refreshing take on how diverse fields such as mathematics, engineering and computer sciences can be combined with advances in synthetic biology to make important contributions to our understanding of life sciences. Next up was a segment on After iGEM, delivered by our Asian iGEM Ambassador Nurul Izzati, and iGEM HP Committee Member, Rahmat Kemal. They emphasized the importance of doing good science to solve everyday issues facing the world and how iGEM provides opportunities for students to pursue their own interests and projects.

Mini lecture by our PI!

Our invited speakers sharing about their experience and research interests

Next, we invited three professors to share with us their research interests, perspectives and experiences with bioentrepreneurship. First up was Prof Hanry Yu, a professor in the Mechanobiology Institute at NUS and a co-founder of Invitrocue, a company that is developing 3D cell-based models of liver and tumour tissues. Next was Dr Adison Wong, an Assistant Professor at the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) and Senior Advisor of Longrunn Medical Technologies, who shared with us about bioentrepreneurship and how to nurture nascent biotechnology startups. Lastly, Assoc Prof Oliver Mueller-Cajar, an Associate Professor at the School of Biological Sciences in NTU, discussed applications of synthetic biology in relation to plant biology and how it can be harnessed for sustainable agriculture. One particularly interesting point that was brought up was how the progress of GMOs and synthetic biology have been halted by regulatory authorities due to pushback by the general public, especially in EU nations, which had effectively staunched the progress of GMOs.

The mini lectures was followed by a panel discussion moderated by Mr Rahmat. Our panelists consists of Prof Hanry Yu, Dr Adison Wong and Dr Tan Yann Chong, the Chief Innovation Officer at A*STAR's Genome Institute of Singapore. He is involved in the formation of a start-up, Atreca, a biotechnology company that develops novel immunotherapeutics. The panelists shared their personal experiences on their start-up journey and decision-making process in regards to their transition from being academics to entrepreneurs, as well as provided valuable advice and encouragement to aspiring bioentrepreneurs in the audience.

Panel discussion about bioentrepreneurship and the local biotechnology start-up scene

Our team leader Douglas and Mr Daulet Aitymbayev!

After a morning filled with discourse on synthetic biology and bioentrepreneurship, we went off for a short lunch break, where we had the opportunity to sit with students and professors to answer their questions and have meaningful conversations with them. We had a fulfilling time sharing our knowledge and learning from the students as well as our professors! After lunch, Team NTU and Team NUS both presented our projects and played Kahoot! quizzes with the students regarding our projects. We also had a sharing session with an iGEM alumnus from Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan, Mr Daulet Aitymbayev, who recounted his iGEM experience. This was especially meaningful and encouraging for our teams who are in the midst of preparing for iGEM 2019!

Before the day ended, both teams conducted interactive sessions, and a lab tour was given around Team NUS’s lab. Our games included a handmade card game called plasmidSNAP! to help students learn about the components required to build a common bacterial plasmid while the Team NUS came up with games such as charades and hangman that incorporated words commonly used in synthetic biology. We also gave short poster presentations on Cas9 and Cas13 enzymes to introduce the students to current genome editing tools that are widely used today. You may view our posters here (Cas9) and here (Cas13).

Kai Shin and Xiao Yu presenting our posters to the students and playing a game of PlasmidSNAP!

...And that concludes Life Hacks! 2.0! We would like to thank everyone involved in making the event a success and hope everyone learnt something new about synthetic biology!

BS4010 Synthetic Biology Sharing

The School of Biological Sciences in NTU offers an undergraduate-level module on Synthetic Biology (course code BS4010) which explores various topics in the field of synthetic biology from the concept of biobricks to therapeutics and applications in the environment. We were excited to be given a chance to share our project with the students studying this course by the course coordinator, Assoc Prof Gao Yonggui. We started off with an introduction on iGEM, followed by a short presentation on current editing tools and RNA editing. We then gave a brief overview on our project in hopes of encouraging a new batch of students to participate next year.

Assoc Prof Gao Yonggui with three-fifths of Team NTU!