Team:Tec-Monterrey/Collaborations
iGEM Paris Saclay
We collaborated with the Paris Saclay team by sharing with them how we implemented the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) ideology into our project. The Paris Saclay team saw an opportunity in iGEM teams to spread the concept of RRI through the scientific community and the general public as well, thanks to our involvement and compromise with our community. This collaboration helped them to assess the level of implementation and awareness of responsible research worldwide, and it also helped to spread the importance of taking into account the duty we, as scientists, have with our society while doing research.
Thanks to this collaboration we were also able to asses the impact of our project in our society, and what actions we were taking in order to make our research useful for solving the problems that our community faces nowadays. We believe RRI should be an essential aspect of any scientific project and it should be implemented from its core. Spreading the RRI ideology will undoubtedly have a great impact in the development of society as a whole, because by doing research with this concepts of responsibility in mind we will be aiming scientific research and technological development towards society’s needs.
iGEM Toulouse
We collaborated with the iGEM Toulouse team while one of our team members was studying abroad in France. She got in contact with the team and organized a meeting in which they discussed several important issues about both projects. They shared the progress of each individual project, the issues encountered so far, talked about sponsors, and gave each other feedback in all of these aspects. They also talked about the support each institution gave to their respective teams.
The final resolution of the meeting was to clarify the misconceptions that both teams had about the way research is facilitated in both, Latin America and Europe, and mainly discuss the development of iGEM projects in each one of the continents. Something great about this collaboration is that, as several members from the Toulouse team were going to the European iGEM teams meeting in Paris, they took the opportunity to share some of our struggles with the other European teams. They offered to expose the Latin American teams scenario (based on our team’s experience) regarding the difficulty in the delivery of the biological material, especially iGEM kit and Biobricks, because of problems with customs in most of Latin American countries.
Meeting at Toulouse
We also collaborated with team Toulouse by translating and recording in Spanish four protocols of the most used methods in genetic engineering: transformation, digestion, ligation and PCR. The team's purpose was to make an electronic manual, based in videos and scripts translated in 4 different languages: English, French, Spanish and German.
Spanish is one of the most spoken languages around the world, so translating the videos into Spanish will definitely help them reach a broader audience. Moreover, there are not many reviewed protocols online in Spanish, and sadly, there are less videos explaining on a pleasant and dynamic way how to carry out the experiments; so taking into account our own experience, we wanted to make this type of content more accessible to people who, like us, are not native english speakers.
iGEM EPF Lausanne
We collaborated with the EPF Lausanne team by helping them with their Human Practice. They wanted to create a platform where iGEM teams were presented, along with their projects, so that we could all get to know each other better. We thought this was a great initiative because iGEM projects are making an impact all over the world and we were happy to take part of it and help them spread the word.
We sent them a description of our project and a description of our team so that everyone could know what we are up to and could get to know us a little better. We also agreed to an interview via Skype where we told them all about our project, the team, our experiences, the struggles we had and all we have learned in iGEM.
Additionally, we shared information about the development of our project and we talked about important issues regarding the struggles we had (specially with customs) while doing research in Mexico and Latin America in general.
Here you can see our team’s interview and project description
And also check out the whole iGEMnews page and all the other teams’ interviews and projects!
iGEM Aix-Marseille University
We collaborated with the iGEM Aix-Marseille University´s team on a virtual discussion panel aimed to exchange information about the normatives and laws that are strictly applied nowadays in France and Mexico respectively. The laws we discussed focused on dumping costs of polluted waste, metals pollution, roads pollution and methods of treatment.
We mainly discussed issues about how efficient are the laws, how well are they implemented, how can we help to carry out the concern about how hazardous are they. However, we wanted to focus on how each project impacts the environment and the society, and how we can help to make real impact in both Europe and Latin America.
iGEM Tec CEM
We helped the Tec CEM team by answering their survey about self medication and public health for their Human Practice. All of the team answered the survey and we shared it amongst our community so they could have enough data.
iGEM Guanajuato Mx
Meetup
We attended the meetup organized by the Guanajuato Mx team. The meetup was attended by the following Mexican teams: Guanajuato Mx, Pumas México, Tec-Chihuahua, TecCEM, and us Tec-Monterrey. In the meetup, we exchanged points of view regarding the biobricks designed by the other teams, the uses and applications of each of the parts and we even helped debug some of them.
Moreover, we gave and received advice for our project and we also had the opportunity to practise the presentation, present a draft of the poster and, in addition, we gave and received feedback concerning all of these issues.
Also, one of the most interesting part of the meeting was the discussion about the current situation of synthetic biology in Mexico. Here, we talked about the ethical issues of having synthetic biology within reach of everyone and the impact it has in our society, and especially in our country, nowadays.
Meetup by guanajuato's team. Photo by Eve Mdo Oficial
Brought to you by iGEM Tec-Monterrey 2016
