Difference between revisions of "Team:Pasteur Paris/test/judgingform"

Entrepreneurship

We envisioned DIANE not only as an IGEM project but also as a real start-up company. We collaborated with a professional who helps entrepreneurial scientists to accelerate their startup projects and with whom we worked every week. We have carried out a market study to determine our potential competitors but also our likely partners. We worked by making short iterations and meeting with professionals from diverse fields to minimize the risk of project failure. By involving potential customers and experts, we ensured maximum responsiveness to offer a product that meets market expectations. We conducted interviews to target our customer segments. To establish financial stability, we made presentations to investors and were able to convince them of the viability of our project to raise 27,260 USD; we also carried out crowdfunding and partnership. In collaboration with the legal department of the Institut Pasteur, we have considered the protection of our device.

Education & Public Engagement

Spreading our knowledge is key for our project. Over two days, we explained antibiotic resistance to four middle school classes at the Collège Germaine de Staël with talks and videos. Our team was invited to the Cité des Sciences, the biggest science museum in Europe, to present our project and raise awareness about antibiotic resistance for a week end. We also presented DIANE to the PhD students from other units in the Institut Pasteur, and to researchers in biology at the YRLS (Young Researchers in Life Sciences) congress. Also, we tabled our project to a conference and a round table “Startup H+ for good” about ethics and transhumanism at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (the National Library of France).

Best integrated Human practices

What makes the value of a project is how well it answers the needs of its customers. That is why at every step of its development we interviewed experts and potential users of our device. Among others, we interviewed an internationally recognized expert in genetics and biochemistry of antibiotic resistance, a member of the French Ministry of Health who worked on strategies in public health to prevent the expansion of antibiotic resistance, doctors working in hospitals, in laboratories and in humanitarian conditions. We also worked with a professional designer to adapt the materials and the portability of our device to the humanitarian context. Conjugating both expert and user views made us realize how important this can be to develop the most relevant device to help in the fight against antibiotic resistance. In addition, we wanted to make the young public aware of synthetic biology and integrate it into our project.