Team:NCKU Tainan/Public Engagement
Overview
This year, our team wanted to truly diversify our Human Practice activities and engage with more members of our community. As a result, we analyzed many amazing projects from the past and highlighted the key aspects of a successful Human Practice activity and distinguish our activities from the rest. Generally, when you think of Human Practice, we usually think of just communicating with society, for example: introducing our projects to people. However, to have an effective engagement activity, we realized that it has to be two-sided. We have to talk with them. So, with this principle in mind and a motivation to maximize our impact and reach, we focused on planning activities where a lot of one-to-one interaction can be held. We also had to think a lot on how to engage with scientists and non-scientists alike. Thus, we came up with a well thought out plan that can successfully achieve our goal of popularizing synthetic biology and introducing our project to the public.
Despite the huge role synthetic biology plays in the improvements and solutions of issues nowadays, it is also one of the most controversial in the public’s opinion. A major part of that is due to the lack of accessibility - whether it be due to the amount of technical knowledge required or the sky high cost of the required technologies. The many common misconceptions or myths caused by the lack of engagement and education poses a huge barrier to the acceptance of the general public. Not only that, we knew that just planning and putting it into practice will not be enough to persuade society to listen to us. We need to show them that we are doing this because we care. We care for not only chronic kidney disease patients, but the society as a whole. Thus, our aim is to slowly chip down these barriers, to close the gap between science and society and increase the knowledge and acceptance when it comes to synthetic biology. What exactly are the concerns people may have regarding genetic engineering? How can our society be more informed about such an important topic, when this technology is advancing at such a rapid speed? Why should society be informed about these things? And most importantly, why care?
With so many questions unanswered, we decided to focus on engaging with our community to inform them about gene editing and understand why they are so concerned and afraid of it. Through public education and engagement, we gained an understanding about people’s attitudes to it and thus, we can shift our focus to addressing those concerns.
Engagement
-2019 NCKU Bike Festival
-iGEM Topic Presentation
-NCKU Creative Forum
-NCKU Club Festival
-Taiwan Conference
-NCKU President meetup
-Charity Work
Publicity
- Radio Interview
- Newspaper
- College X
Education
- Tainan First Senior High School
- Indonesia Kemurnian II High School
- Nanke International Experimental School
2019 NCKU iGEM Special Project
- OMG Escape Room
2019.03.02
NCKU Bike Festival
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2019.03.05
Club Festival
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2019.03.18
iGEM topic presentation
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2019.04.08
President meetup
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2019.05.23
Nanke International Experimental School
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2019.05.29
Tainan First Senior High School
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2019.06.26
Economic News
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2019.06.26
NCKU News
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2019.07.20
United News
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2019.07.24
college X
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2019.07.31
Kaohsiung Radio interview
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2019.08.
05~06
Taiwan Conference
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2019.08.11
Charity Work
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2019.08.21
indonesia kemurnian ll senior high school
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2019.08.27
NCKU Creative Forum
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2019.09.07
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Escape room
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Engagement
We firmly believe engagement with society is a fundamental pillar for Human Practices, a way to build bridges to link science to the society. Despite the efforts and sacrifices scientists and researchers have made in the name of science, we realized there is still so much misunderstanding and knowledge gap from the public. As fellow researchers, we felt it our responsibility to engage with the society and show them first-hand, be it through introducing synthetic biology or our project, the reason we are doing this.
NCKU Bike Festival
NCKU Bike Festival is the open house event of National Cheng Kung University, where high school students from all parts of Taiwan came to visit and understand the different majors offered at NCKU. Seizing the opportunity to be able to meet the high school students and understand the level of understanding and support for synthetic biology, our team decided to set up a stand at the festival. Unsurprisingly, despite most high school students knowing a lot about high school biology, they are not very knowledgeable about synthetic biology nor its application in daily lives. They were also able to participate in voting for 9 possible topics that we had chosen beforehand and also receive feedback as to which particular area they are most concerned about. We also met several people who were against gene editing, claiming that we don’t know what happens when consuming GMOs despite the plethora of research claiming that it is safe for human consumption. Their lack of knowledge about the application of biology in daily lives inspired us to begin designing activities for spreading awareness about it.
iGEM topic presentation
After we had finished our first round of brainstorming, and selected three possible topics for us to eventually focus on, we presented it to other students and professors in our university. They also had the opportunity to vote which one out of three ideas they are most interested in. Our three topics this year, was: synthetic production of erythropoietin, degrading uremic toxins in CKD patients and microfiber trapping and degrading. Each group had twenty minutes to present their idea, and 10 minutes for the audience to ask questions. The questions asked allowed each group to understand more about the problems they are facing and also blind spots so they can improve the project. In addition, we met members from CCU iGEM after the presentation. We talked about how our iGEM teams operate, how we recruit members and how we will eventually choose our final topic for the competition. This conversation, albeit short, was very enlightening and we all learned a lot from each other.
NCKU Creative Forum
Our intention of joining this forum is mainly focused on promoting our project, along with broadening our perspectives. The students that are involved in this activity are much different than usual, with each having their own expertise and projects they are working on. Hence, we are able to speak more about synthetic biology, our project and also the competition itself. With their expertise on different fields, we received wonderful feedback from them, including the probability of incorporating AI into our project, using machine learning and also the importance of education for students and also the public on genetically modified organisms.
NCKU Club Festival
Every semester, NCKU will hold a Club festival to introduce and promote all the clubs in the school to all freshmen students. iGEM NCKU participated in this festival to share about our upcoming iGEM event which was our topic presentation. We realized that despite being in university, there are still many people who are not aware of the importance of synthetic biology in real life. Thus, we shared to other students why we are using synthetic biology to solve problems and our vision for our projects. Instead of having a fixed booth, we decided to roam the entire area of the activity, having one-on-one conversations with other participants.This allowed us to get plenty of comments and feedback from many different people, which contributed greatly to our project.
Taiwan Conference
This year, National Chung Hsing University hosted the Taiwan Conference in Taichung. Taiwan Conference may only last two days, but in that two days, teams from all over Taiwan are able to meet and communicate with each other, exchanging feedback and generating new ideas. We are also able to present our project via presentation and poster to the other teams and also a few other professors. Through that, we are able to receive a lot of constructive criticism from not only teachers but also other students, enabling us to identify some issues in our project and also improve our presentation style. We also were able to listen to other iGEM teams presentation, and were deeply amazed by what the other teams were doing. We also promoted our team by handing out our specially designed folder to other iGEMers present during the conference.
NCKU President meet up
We were ecstatic to have lunch with the President of National Cheng Kung University, Dr. Huey-Jen Jenny Su. The president has always been very supportive of iGEM and has been rooting for us ever since iGEM NCKU first started in 2016. We talked briefly about the reason we joined the competition and what we hoped to gain through this once-in-a-lifetime experience. She reminded us of all the hardships and obstacles that lay ahead of us but also encouraged us to keep moving forward despite it.
Charity Work
Through an activity hosted by Taiwan Chronic Kidney Disease Foundation and Chia-Yi Chang Gung Hospital in Yunlin, we helped with the blood screening and also health examination of the public. Through this activity, we are able to meet and interact with some CKD patients and understand more about the symptoms of CKD and the inconvenience the disease has on their lifestyle.
Publicity
Despite our enthusiasm and willingness, we came to the realization that no matter how hard we try we alone are not able to change the world. We knew that we had to find a way to boost our visibility, to let our voices be heard much louder and clearer. By collaborating with different organizations, we are able to step onto a bigger platform and showcase the importance of science and our hopes and motivations to a wider audience.
Radio Interview
We were absolutely delighted when we were invited to record a session with the National Education Radio as broadcasting on national radio enables us to reach more people. Through this radio interview, we were able to speak about synthetic biology concepts to the public directly. The host also gave us a chance to explain about the iGEM competition and also our “Oh My Gut” project. By sharing the experience, we get to influence more people and raise the awareness of CKD and live therapeutics.
Newspaper
In an effort to raise awareness of live therapeutics and synthetic biology to the public, we also reached out to several media outlets. We published some articles on NCKU News and also reached out to two Taiwanese local newspaper, Economic Daily and United newspaper. After corresponding with them, their reporters assisted us in publishing our article. This method will also increase the visibility of our team and let everyone know the direction of our efforts. This seems like a good strategy as after our articles were published, the school’s administrative units also took the initiative to find us and provided us with more opportunities to consult more professors or experts.
College X
College X is the tenth and newest college at National Cheng Kung University, focusing on trans-disciplinary collaboration of undergraduate teaching, research, and outreach. And as one of National Cheng Kung University’s more established multi-disciplinary team, we had the opportunity to work with College X. We were able to sit down and talk about what we as a multi-disciplinary team may face and what the school may help us with and vice versa.
Education
From our previous engagements, we began to realize that society, especially the older generations, tend to think twice when it comes to synthetic biology and gene editing. The many misconceptions and myths surrounding science is proof that not a lot of people understand it. And with lack of knowledge, fear and rejection also comes along. In an effort to prevent this negative cycle from repeating, we decided to start from the beginning - by educating the new generation. We hoped by challenging their thoughts and encouraging them to begin thinking outside the box, they are able to break away from this negative cycle and drive a positive change in the future. To quote Oprah Winfrey, “Education is the way to move mountains, to build bridges, to change the world.”
Tainan First Senior High School
As the best high school in Tainan, we decided to step our plans up a notch. We visited TNFSH’s medical research club and biological research club with the aim of introducing synthetic biology and its real world applications to them. We presented several controversial cases about synthetic biology and genetic modification, like CRISPR Baby and also several past iGEM projects to give them a basic idea of how we can apply the things they learn in class to the real world. We then introduced our project to them, and also educated them on the importance of CKD. We held a small brainstorming activity for them, guiding them to think of a way to solve problems using synthetic biology. They were very interested and engaged in this particular session, throwing out countless amazing ideas. We hope to have kindled some interest in their young minds to join the next generation of iGEMers.
Indonesia Kemurnian II High School
We visited Kemurnian II High School, Jakarta to teach 10th graders as Indonesians students are not really aware of what synthetic biology is, nor what it can be applied to in real life. We taught them about gene editing, and gave them some real life applications, like gene modified tomato, GM salmon and insulin. We grabbed the opportunity to share about our project, proving that you don’t have to be scientists or researchers in professional labs to be able to apply synthetic biology in real life. Thus, we then gave the students an opportunity to brainstorm on their own, thinking of problems they would like to solve using synthetic biology. We also hope that we were able to inspire them to be the first high school team from Indonesia to join the iGEM competition. We were very surprised and delighted by their work. One team wanted to get create nicotine-free cannabis plants to use as a cure for epilepsy. One team wanted to make a non-toxic pesticide to save the environment, as they are aware that Indonesia is a massive agriculture country that requires heavy usage of pesticides. One team were inspired by the dengue fever epidemic in Indonesia and proposed a bacteria that can get rid of yellow fever mosquito. From this visitation, we realized that having synthetic biology lessons in high school can be interesting, and is able to allow students to think critically and have more awareness for problems in the world.
Nanke International Experimental School
We were grateful to have an opportunity to visit Nanke International Experimental School. We aimed to convey the basic knowledge of synthetic biology to primary school students and hope to ignite their interest in science through simple and fun lessons. We used image-based teaching and question-and-answer methods for children to better understand the structure of kidneys and its importance in our body. In addition, we taught the students to create a DIY kidney model out of plastic bottles and tubes to simulate the function of the kidney. Through this hands-on approach, students are more engaged in the class. The bright smiles the students gave us as we ended the lesson gave us a sense of accomplishment and more motivation to continue on with our project.
2019 NCKU iGEM Special Project
OMG Escape Room
This year, in an effort to combine all three facets of Human Practices - engagement, education and publicity outreach, we launched our very first and original Escape Room Activity. An innovative and fun way of learning, this activity proved to be a hit! Players are able to learn more about synthetic biology and also our project through an interactive and hands-on experience. Part adventure, part intriguing storyline, and an assemblage of puzzles and readers, players will resort to critical thinking to be able to make their escape - in a fun way of course. Science has shown that when having fun, not only does time fly, but we are able to retain more of what we learn too. In addition, iGEM NCKU Tainan also worked with Taiwan Chronic Kidney Disease Foundation (TCKDF) before, so we decided to donate all the benefits (4200 NTD) to the largest CKD charity organization in Taiwan. Not only could players have fun learning, they are also able to do charity for chronic kidney disease patients.
One of our goals when designing our Escape Game was to make it completely open-source and customizable for everyone to use. Therefore, we will provide a full guide explaining our game setup and all the details. Our Escape Game is simple in design, and only requires a limited budget due to the use of DIY equipment. Through the simplicity of the game, we also ensured that players of all ages are able to play our game and still have fun. We had players ranging from elementary school students to university professors, and they all had a blast.
We only unveiled our OMG Escape Game for a limited two-day event, and has received many positive responses. Since its creation, we have presented our game 13 times inside the Department of Biotechnology, NCKU, to a total of 55 players. In total, we had over 13 hours of game time.
