Team:UiOslo Norway/Public Engagement

UiOslo

Reaching out

Breakfast meeting about synthetic biology

(April 25th)

Tekna, the Norwegian Society of Graduate Technical and Scientific Professionals, arranged this event to inform the attendees about synthetic biology. During the event speakers covered topics such as the developmental status of synthetic biology, regulations, and ethics around its use. The live stream of all presentations can be found on Tekna´s website.

We were fortunate to have some time at the end of the meeting where we presented iGEM and the basic idea of our project. We see this event as useful for students for two reasons: first they got to hear more about the approaches to and aspects of synthetic biology, and second they saw a great example of how they can implement synthetic biology into their studies.

Presentation for students

(August 14th and October 15th)

During the master students’ first week at university, they attend lectures introducing them to their study program. We were happy to introduce iGEM and our project to around 60 new students.

Naturviterne, a union for academics with a passion for sustainability, reached out to us and asked if we were interested in talking about iGEM and our project in an event arranged by them. On October 15th we did just that. The audience turned out to be mostly bachelor students from our own department at the university.

Overall impression from both events is that many of the students showed a genuine interest in iGEM and synthetic biology. We hope our presentation has inspired them to join iGEM in the years to come!

Cutting Edge Festival

(October 24th)

One of the largest technology and science events in Norway is the cutting edge festival. It is hosted by Oslo Science Park, Inven2, the University of Oslo and Conventor. The focus of the festival is to show some of the possibilities science, innovation and technology can offer in the future. Particular focus was placed on how technology can improve many aspects of society, including sustainability. The festival is a place where students, researchers, entrepreneurs, investors, people from industry, government and media, all meet at the same place.

This year we will have a poster at this major event. It is a great opportunity for us to prepare for Boston, and at the same time inform others about our project. Our goals for this event are to receive input on our poster, presentation skills, and project; and we are positive that we will learn a lot from this event.

For more information, please visit the cutting edge festival website

Nerdy Science Cake Competition

(March 14th)

The science library arranged for a cake competition where the cakes should be scientific. Only the imagination will set limits in this kind of event. We decided to make a cake together with one of our supervisors. The theme of our cake was: “The central dogma: open accessed”. The idea was to have a cake that resembled a cell, but where we could see everything from the DNA being transcribed in the nucleus, to RNA being translated in the cytosol and turn into an organism. Psst…. can you see the “42”?

"Change my mind" Stand

(August 22th)

We arranged to have a stand with a poster saying “GMOs belongs in the natural environment” in the science library on campus. Our goal was to invite people to discuss the use of GMOs and share their opinion regarding the case.

During the four hours we stayed there, Alec talked to people non-stop and found that people have some concerns, ranging from the effects of accidental release to the less understandable concern about fundamental differences between electricity made from GMOs and that made from other sources.

We also used the opportunity to inform the interested people about iGEM, our project and receiving their answers on our survey.

Interview by Eivind Torgersen from Titan

(October 11th)

Photo: Eivind Torgersentitan.uio.no is a research website with multiple writers, where they present everything related to natural sciences and technology. Eivind Torgersen is a journalist that himself has studied history, philosophy and political science. Now he works for this webpage where he communicates science. When he contacted us after hearing about iGEM he seemed very intrigued by the idea. He attended one of our weekly meetings where we briefly explained what we were working on. Later he joined us in the lab to see how we worked and to ask us questions. We hope that the post he is making can serve multiple purposes, such as informing students of iGEM and help us share our project.