Team:UANL/Public Engagement
Contents
EDUCATION & PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT
Activities
THE SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY TUNNEL
The “Synthetic Biology Tunnel” is a science diffusion event targeted to the younger audience (kids and young adults), but still open for all public. The tunnel consists of 10 modules. These were visited throughout the 90 minutes of the “road”, several topics such as DNA, Genes, BioBricks, Genetic Engineering, Synthetic Biology, Biosafety, and iGEM will be explained along the way. We made this event as a collaboration with ConCiencia UANL (an organization made up by students in order to spread science), that helped us with logistics, invitation and guides of the assistants during the event.
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Event Scope
We made two expositions: on Centro de Innovación y Emprendimiento de la UANL, on September 28th and October 19th, the number of assistants reached 70 people, and counted with 25 staff members.
Besides, there are two programed expositions on October 22nd to 24th in Feria de Ciencias Infantil del Instituto Politécnico Nacional (IPN) located in Reynosa, Tamaulipas and also November 30th. This event will take place at "Centro de Innovación y Emprendimiento de la UANL", we hope to have a similar reach-and even more significant- compared to the ones already done.
Impact over attendees
The students that attended the "Synthetic Biology Tunnel" got the chance to do short interviews to the members of the iGEM Team, in which we got the opportunity to transmit our knowledge and experience as science students. Why did you choose to study science?
What motivates you when you feel down?
What do you like the most about your career?
What is the hardest thing about studying science?
We also got a chance to hear the opinions of all the attendees, in which we got encouraging messages, such as: Thanks for everything, you are inspirers
Mexican Sign Language (LSM) Diffusion
The issue of scientific diffusion in our country is one of the major concerns of the scientific community nowadays since it is minimal. According to “Censo Nacional de Población y Vivienda de México” (National Population and Housing Census of Mexico) in 2010, 62 out of 10,000 citizens suffer from hearing impairment. In addition to this, in 21st point of The Salamanca Statement and Framework For Action of the UNESCO in 1994 declares that "The importance of sign language as the medium of communication among the deaf, should be recognized and provision made to ensure that all deaf persons have access to education in their national sign language." (DIF, 2018)
In response to this, we decided to give diffusion to our project in Mexican Sign Language (LSM), in order to deliver our project to the community that uses it as a mean of communication. We made a video explaining what we did and its importance.
For this, we received support from Jesús Mario Aguirre Mejía, official interpreter of LSM in Nuevo León. His collaboration resulted very important not only for his performance in LSM, but also for his experience in attention to vulnerable groups in legislation, health, and business matters. Besides helping us with the translation and explanation of our project, he remarked the importance of inclusion in science, since science is an area yet to expand.
Conferences at UANL’S institutions
We made a series of conferences in some of the participating institutions of the iGEM team, to introduce them to the competition to propel the formation of new teams, but mainly to explain the importance of multidisciplinarity between university students, and the importance of pursuing opportunities that encourage scientific and technological developments.
Conference at Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo en Educación Bilingüe (CIDEB)
We made a conference at CIDEB UANL (Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo en Educación Bilingüe) a junior high school, to encourage more students to start their path in science. This conference aimed to a group of students that are about to choose what they will study.
There were 30 assistant and we noticed the effects of weak diffusion of opportunities regarding science; since students showed a lot of interest.
One of the topics that caused the most impact were the statistics of the role played by women in science, and the importance of promoting science programs between women.
Conference at Facultad de Ingeniería Mecánica y Eléctrica (FIME)
“Circuitos Sintéticos y Máquinas Biológicas” (Synthetic Circuit and Biological Machines) was a conference given at Facultad de Ingeniería Mecánica y Eléctrica (FIME), on Tuesday, September 24th. This event focused on students of Mechatronics Engineering, and Software Technology Engineering.
The impact of this conference came up due to a member of our team that studies Software Technology Engineering, he explained biological processes, and he emphasized the importance of multidisciplinarity in a team, which interested the attendees, they made different questions such as: How do they get along? How do you unify your contributions?
Conference at Facultad de Ciencias Químicas (FCQ)
The second event was on Thursday, October 10th. This conference was presented to students of the Biologist Pharmaceutical Chemistry (QFB) and Chemical Engineer (IQ) majors. The topics were similar to those of the first conference held. However, there was a greater emphasis on the therapeutic applications of synthetic biology.
We organized the conference "Synthetic biology, opportunities and applications". On September 24th, the students who attended were majoring in Industrial Chemistry. There we addressed topics related to our project that was of interest to the attendees; among them, the most prominent one was synthetic biology.
Congress
SUSTENTA Congress
Sustenta is a congress organized by the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM). Its purpose is to introduce the objectives for sustainable development by the ONU and motivate attendees to change their lifestyles to fulfill the objectives, either by the individual or collective actions, among exhibitors and attendees, there were professionals of all areas, so as young students.
This time, we participated in their 4th edition with a conference about bio-economy and circular economy with a biotechnological focus. We presented the concept of synthetic biology and its applications on the areas mentioned before, taking as an example of our project, emphasizing the importance of multidisciplinarity to the resolution of problems of the current world.
We delimited the problematic of the usage of fossil fuel as the base of the current economy, and the limited alternatives we have available for this resource, highlighting the importance of innovation in this area and exposing the tools needed to do so.
We also made a dynamic named "Seek and Sustain". In this activity, we presented different environmental problems of the region to the attendees. Issues such as the sargassum on Mexican beaches, soil exploitation due to agriculture, atmospheric pollution, the use of plastic, among others were some of the problems that we addressed in this event. The objective of this dynamic was the implementation of the topics discussed in the conference.
In this activity we organized the attendants into multidisciplinary teams, the participants had to apply their acquired knowledge to solve the problem given, considering different aspects such as legislation, creativity, viability, social and environmental impact. Four judges evaluated the proposals: 2 iGEM UANL team members, and two ITESM professors. The winning team got courtesies for the INC entrepreneurship congress, where they could find a way to make their proposal a reality.
Reference
DIF: Sistema Nacional para el Desarrollo Integral de la Familia. (2018). Manual de Lengua de Señas Mexicana. Gobierno del Estado de Puebla. http://dif.pueblacapital.gob.mx/images/descargas/MANUAL_LSM_Interactivo5.pdf