Team:OLS Canmore/Human Practices

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HUMAN PRACTICES SUMMARY

Human practices and ethics is a very general topic which our team has talked about extensively, in an attempt to cover as many perspectives as possible. Our main focus for our project was outreach and community engagement, which is compatible with our goal to find a solution to hair clogging in wastewater treatment facilities, as well as the tedious problem of feather waste.

Earlier this year, we were given the opportunity to attend a water summit hosted by Inside Education, called Navig8. This event gave us a more comprehensive understanding of what happens to water once it is released from the treatment center, allowing implementation planning of our project to begin.

Naturally, as a Catholic school, we also decided to reach out to our local parish. We spoke with Father Wilbert about the possible conflict that could arise between synthetic biology and our faith. This communication gave us helpful insight into the relationship between science and religion.

Throughout the year, we have participated in many collaborations, including cooperations with the University of Lethbridge high school team, as well as an iGEM team hailing from Taiwan. In addition, we have collaborated with and allowed two university iGEM teams; Rice University, as well as a Swiss university team out of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), to interview a few of our members for their platforms which feature iGEM news and interviews. This was a great way to inform and share our project with other individuals of the iGEM community.

Another way we have informed others is through our two papers that were published in Biotreks, a peer-reviewed startup journal.

As an educational aspect of iGEM, the majority of our team is participating in Synthetic Biology 15, a course that offers high school credits. Our major project is to create an infographic that educates new members of the iGEM community about a biobrick and its parts.

Lastly, we have created an ethics team tasked with analyzing both ours and Lethbridge's ethical, moral, and rational complications within the projects. This will help us understand what is and is not in society, in regards to synthetic biology.

Overall, we feel that during the 2016 season, the extensive work we have put into human practices has lead us to many successes, making a large contribution to the progress of our project.

Contact us at:
https://www.facebook.com/OLeSsence/
@igem_canmore
larvisais@redeemer.ab.ca