Team:USTC/Human Practices
Education & Public Engagement
The iGEM competition has provided us with a broad platform where we learn to think critically and creatively. We have been confronted with many problems but eventually managed to solve each of them. Through this wonderful experience, not only did we get a better command of lab skills and investigation methods, but we also gained a deeper understanding of synthetic biology and the competition itself. Therefore, we are eager to share our knowledge, experience and passion to the public.
The Science Open Week
Our university held a Science Open Week on May 18th and 19th, 2019. People from local
community were welcome to go into the laboratories and take part in various activities
with detailed descriptions and hands-on experiments. Over 200 thousand people were drawn
to participate.
Actively involved in this big event, some of our team members worked as volunteers to
offer guidance and assistance to visitors. We made introductions to the basic concepts
of biology and tried to arouse people’s interest in science.
Fig 1. People were exploring the beautiful world of biology.
iGEM propagation
We held two lectures on campus about iGEM competition and synthetic biology in September. We explained to other students what iGEM and synthetic biology are and what we do in an iGEM competition to accomplish our project. We also introduced our project and our achievements this year. These lectures received good feedback from the audience, for they raised questions and showed curiosity towards our project. We also gained a lot from their suggestions.
Fig 2. The iGEM lectures.
Help with a new team
Students from Anhui University of Chinese Medicine (AHTCM) are preparing for next year's iGEM, the first year for their school to join iGEM family. Invited into our lab, they learned about foundamental equipment and experiments from our team members. We still keep in touch with them, and are going to help them start their first iGEM season.
Fig 3. We showed the students from AHTCM around our lab.
Meet up
We attended 6th CCiC in Shenzhen from 8.19-8.23. We were highly inspired at the meetup. Taking the suggestion from judges and students from other teams, we shifted our goal and focused mainly on aromatic amines resistance. Besides, we had constructive communications with Team NTHU-Taiwan and Team UESTC. NTHU students gave us advice on promoter improvement, and UESTC students discussed their visit to water plant with us.
Fig 4. The 6th CCiC.