Team:Tongji Shanghai/HP/Gold
Overview
- The Tongji 2016 iGEM team has been focusing on nowadays treatments of tumor worldwide and how to improve the current photothermal therapy using synthetic biology. IGEM was a fabulous stage and we did a lot of human practices. For us, it was a beginning and we are going to do more in the future.
Public Education and Engagement
Shanghai Science and Technology Museum
- On Aug 16, 2016, with 3 other iGEM teams, we made an exhibition at Shanghai Science and Technology Museum. During summer vocation, there are many kids visiting the museum with their parents. We introduced the iGEM competition by playing some both interesting and scientific videos to the people who visited the museum that day.
A grade 9 student even asked us some questions about synthetic biology. It’s a great opportunity to popularize scientific knowledge. More than 5000 people have seen our project, what’s more, we had a good communication with other teams about our projects! All 4 teams introduced their own projects, received some suggestions from others, and our friendship has been improved.
Teams include: NYU Shanghai, Tongji, SJTU, XJTLU
Course with No.2 Middle School Affiliated to Tongji
- On Sep 30, 2016, 168 grade 10 students from No.2 Middle School Affiliated to Tongji University spent a day visiting the Tongji University campus.
In school of life science and technology, we made an exhibition of some animal and plant specimen, told the story behind the specimen. They seemed so interested in biology. Then we popularize scientific knowledge about synthetic biology and introduced the iGEM competition to them. It was a little changeable for them, so we tried to make it easy to understand. It’s great to share with senior high school students. They are so young that they have some extraordinary ideas which surprised us a lot.
Tongji Hospital Visit
- Since our project is about tumor and its treatment, we want to know how will patients and citizens think of it. Thanks to Tongji Hospital, we could get the access to introduce iGEM and our project to the patients, and then we could communicate with them about their life as well. Some ideas were quite constructive and helpful to our improvement of the project, though most patients couldn't understand it well. On the other hand, it's meaningful for us to learn more about empathy and care. We are willing and determined to do more volunteer work about health and care in the future. IGEM is a great platform to start, and there is a long way to go.
Team Communications
Taipei Workshop in NYMU
- We are proudly invited by National Yang-Ming University, an active iGEM team to have a visit in Taipei in August. NYMU kindly held an communication meeting together with other iGEM teams in north Taiwan: TAS, NTHU, NCTU.
We shared our project ideas and give suggestion with each other. To improve commutation experience, we had a “World Café” Workshop focus on environmental protect and youth social responsibility. Team members from different schools presented their personal thoughtful ideas. Moreover, we made a colorful painting together to conclude our discussion results after the workshop.
Unforgettable experience with all the new friends form Taiwan! We not only considered project suggestions and perfected our projects but made friends with each other as well.
Seminar with SJTU
- Our team is found on Nov 19, 2015, 2 months before Team SJTU2016 is found. A visit to Shanghai Jiaotong University in Minhang District is paid on Dec 27, 2015. We shared some remarkable project that we had collected from all of the teams in the season of 2015 and some even before. Then they showed us around the campus and had a great lunch together.
Seminar with NYU-Shanghai
- On Jun 19, 2016, we had a visit to NYU-Shanghai. We had a good talk about genetically engineering machine. The old team member, also known as the founder of IGEM in Tongji, shared their project at the year of 2014.
Afterwards, our team introduced the project this year, and have a heated discussion. The third part is NYU-Shanghai introducing their project. We raised important conflict that their work might be repeating one team in 2015, and gave some suggestion for improvements. In the end, we visited the NYU campus in Shanghai, then send farewell to each other. This meeting improves the relation between both teams, and we all gained vital information by collective minds.
Meet-Ups
NCKU Asia Pacific Conference
- We took part in the 4th iGEM Asia-Pacific Conference 2016 at National Cheng Kung University from 2016/08/08 to 2016/08/14.It’s the first time for Tongji, a young iGEM team to join such an international conference, We get a opportunity to communicate with teams from Asia-pacific region.
We held an impressive presentation and poster exhibition in NCKU with the topic of an optimized targeted breast cancer therapy. Meanwhile, we received plenty of constructive advice from our audience, especially experienced related scholars, which help us to optimize our cancer therapy design.
We truly believed that by this Asia-Pacific Academic Exchange Conference, we, as well as all the other teams are able to have communications, achieving better results. What’s more, we build a consensus that multidisciplinary cooperation could be better improved by involving in Synthetic Biology and iGEM Competition.
