Team:UTArlingtonTexasUSA/Public Engagement
EDUCATION & PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT
"Innovative educational tools and public engagement activities have the ability to discuss the science behind synthetic biology, spark new scientific curiosity and establish a public dialogue about synthetic biology from voices and views outside the lab."
Our team’s efforts to include more people in shaping synthetic biology involved cultivating innovative ways to bring together people who wish to contribute to a culture of intellectual curiosity. In order to enhance the translation of synthetic biology to our university community, we founded a student organization at our called the Genetic Engineering Society. Our purpose is to operate as the umbrella that hosts UTA's iGEM Team as well as facilitate student body meetings with the intent to deliver awareness of synthetic biology, recruit iGEM team members, and support ways to host interdisciplinary collaboration and research through iGEM at UTA.
We also partnered with Engineering Student Council to bring our mission to students who are seeking to be involved in establishing new traditions and enhancing their college education experience. We chose to utilize our representative council because they facilitate the connection between the faculty of our university and all students of the college of engineering. This connection allowed our project to generate interest from students and faculty from different science and engineering disciplines as well as funding for registration from our university’s student government.
We hope that our goal of expanding on a previous project to improve the detection of one of the most common petroleum pollutants resonates with the communities we have been able to reach. By bringing iGEM to our university for the first time, we hope to facilitate a merging between the different fields of science and engineering for the shared purpose of using synthetic biology to improve the world. We believe that by designing new and innovative ways to detect harmful pollutants, new ways of eradicating them can be developed and implemented. Through our Human Practices activities, we hope to demonstrate how we have thought carefully and creatively about whether our project is responsible and good for the world
