Team:UPRM/SynBioWeek
Synthetic Biology Week
During the week of October 15 - 19, iGEM RUM inaugurated the first-ever Synthetic Biology Week in the University of Puerto Rico history. This week consisted of various activities such as talks and workshops for students and teachers. In addition, the Puerto Rico's Opportunities for Biosciences Economical and Technological Advancement Town Hall with local politicians and relevant people in the industry of biosciences. This activities were elaborated in cooperation with CoHemis. Our goal was to keep engaging with members of our society and introduce a potentially controversial topic to people who might be skeptical about its uses. We want to make sure that development in Synthetic Biology is encouraged, but with the necessary safeguards to prevent harmful uses of the advancing technologies.(?)
Our activities included...
Operation 456: Workshop for high school students
A three day interactive workshop for high school students related to Genetic engineering and Recombinant DNA. They gained knowledge from us on the safety rules, methods and laboratory techniques on: DNA extraction, digestion, ligation, transformation, electrophoresis, and bioinformatics.
Synthetic Biology Caribbean Talk
The Synthetic Biology Caribbean Talk 2019 was aimed for high school students and the college community on topics related to Synthetic Biology, its applications, opportunities in the research area and more. Its main objective was to have an open dialogue between the scientific community and the student community, in the west region of Puerto Rico, to discuss interdisciplinary issues related to Synthetic Biology.
Puerto Rico's Opportunity for Bioscience Economic and Technological Advancement Town Hall 2019
Known as PROBETA 2019, it was a conversation between the scientific community in the field of Synthetic Biology and political figures of the Government of Puerto Rico. Some of the objectives were to promote economic exposure of the research initiatives in this topic, initiate guidelines to promote ethical development of science and establish social policies that ensure a healthy development of Synthetic Biology for our society.
PROBETA 2019
Synthetic Biology for Educators
Professional improvement for high school science educators with the objective of giving them all the necessary knowledge and methods to implement Synthetic Biology in their classroom. This training was approved by Departamet of Education of Puerto Rico. Coordinated by iGEM RUM, this coaching excercise included Synthetic Biology course objectives, topics, text and online resources and institucional to be used, suggested experiments, and any more.