Team:Shanghai City/Public Engagement
Public Engagement
Online Comics & Courses
To vividly explain the basic principle of DNA encryption, we draw several short comics and posted them online. Our comics were popular on Wechat Moment, Chinese Version of Instagram, viewers commented that it vividly illustrate the theory behind DNA Encryption, how to encrypt the information by using A,T,C, and G. Furthermore, we held two online courses to enhance the impact of iGEM and our project separately. After the course ended, several students who were interested in iGEM sent message to us to ask further details about iGEM. We found out that by illustrating the details of iGEM and our project to others, we are able to figure out the points that we were still deficient and correct it afterward.
Online Short Episode Filming
We filmed a short episode about an application of DNA Encryption and posted on two Chinese popular video websites, Youku and Tencent. The episode is about a DNA Time Pill evoke a past love story between a young couple. After the video are posted, we have received over 4000 clicks and many viewer comments that they get a vivid understanding of DNA Encryption and Storage through our episode.
Here is the link to our mini-movie:
Tencent Video: https://url.cn/5RDtCGx?sf=uri
Youtube: https://youtu.be/C5yUJshbNDs
Online Articles on DNA Knowledge
In order to disseminate DNA Encryption further, we create a Wechat Publication, a popular self-media platform in China, and publicized several articles about the history of DNA storage, development of the DNA Encryption, the function and theory behind DNA encryption, and a famous professor’s professional comment of our project. As shown by the background data, the total viewers of our articles have reach 1600 people and have been shared to their social media over 50 times. The publication is still active till now, and we would upload a new article every two weeks on it to disseminate the DNA Encryption.
News Reporting
With the reputation growth in the internet, there exist more people followed us. Among them, a media, China Teenager Tech-innovation Daily, found us and asked for an interview. They were really surprised when they heard that we were gonna to attend iGEM in November. The reporter asked our purpose for starting this project and our future expectation, besides they were also curious about the market application of DNA encryption. We told the daily reporter that attending iGEM with proliferating the leading techniques on DNA information storage & encryption is our principal goal and we wished to present our key findings to the whole world.
Fund Raising
Designing Related Product
To support our project and team development, we designed several DNA related products such as ring, necklaces, bracelet, and keychain based on the DNA structure and folding fans and T-Shirts which get pattern of DNA on them to raise fund. We contact some factory to manufacture the product. After we express our purpose and background to a factory manager, he was willing to support us and manufacture our design at cost price. We posted our product on the online store and sold them in our off-line promotion activity. Once our self-design products were posted on the store, they have been extremely welcomed by consumers. All of our products had sold out in just 1 weeks being posted, and the total profit had reached over 3000 RMB. The increase of asset greatly alleviated the tight budget of experiment and stimulate our passion of our project.
Off-line Fund-raising Promotion
Later we held our first off-line fund-raising propaganda in the 3rd floor conference hall in Pacific Digital Mall to further disseminate DNA Encryption and the progress of our project. To enrich the content of sharing session, we invite several famous university students and graduate students to share the study experience of different majors including Biological Engineering and other majors from STEM to humanities. Surprisingly, the Shanghai marketing manager of Mobike (the biggest sharing bike company in China) joint our sharing session voluntarily and share his study experience in Communication Engineering. The sharing session was held perfectly, there were over 30 participant. All of them were impressive about our project and bought some related products or made donations.
Promotion Event Towards Children
To attract the attention and interest of young kids, we design a Jenga Building Blocks Game but with a different rule: using the Jenga blocks, which contain A,T,C or G on it, to construct the world that we give. We held the booth game at the Qian Xuesen Library and at Shanghai Movie Museum. This game attracted tover 100, children and their parents as well. The children in the process of learning and understand the simulation process of the trial. Besides，parents talked with our teammates to inquire about the details of the event, and said that it is very interesting.
iGEM Promotion
According to our outstanding performance, New Oriental English School invites us to have a introducing speech about iGEM in their classroom and designs a testing sheet for the students who want to attend iGEM. The Speech was well welcomed by the students and parents. Audiences have filled all of the classroom. With our Q&A, parents and students got further understanding of iGEM and some of them were willing to try our testing sheets. In total, there were nearly 30 students who took the test. The test included the testing of the basic biology knowledge, social study ability, human practice ability, and the information search skill. After they finished their test, we would give the feedback back to these students and illustrated their strength and weakness and whether they are suitable for attending iGEM. At the end, 13 students promised they would attend 2020 iGEM.