Welcome to iGEM Aachen 2016

Public Engagement

“Education is a common task of science and economy [...].”

Dr. Karsten Schürrle, DECHEMA

Establishing a dialogue with the public and getting them in contact with synthetic biology was something we feel is extremely important. Listed below, you can find in which ways attempted to spread the iGEM spirit.

Spreading the News

We wished to get in touch with as many people as possible. Hence, for presenting our work without us being physically there, we developed several ways to spread information about our project and the idea of synthetic biology.

Newsletter
From the beginning on, we received a lot of support from various sides and many people were interested in our project. That is why we thought of a way to inform them all at the same time about our progress and developed a monthly newsletter. It was sent to all of our supporters and everybody who opted in. With the newsletter, we intended to explain our project to people with and without the scientific background and therefore developed a short and an extended version. Writing it helped us reflecting about our work and also preparing for the wiki. We even received suggestions from experts who read about our main challenges in the newsletter.

Flyer Distribution
Our flyer was created in the beginning of our project to give interested supporters a short overview about our idea and to inform people about what we are doing throughout this year of participating in iGEM.
As iGEM is a great opportunity and experience for everybody - not only university students - and as we could not visit as many schools as we wished, we also sent an adapted version of the flyer with additional information about the competition to about 300 different schools.

Presenting iGEM and Our Project at Schools

Figure 1: "FCG" school in Düsseldorf.

Our team visited many different schools in and close to Aachen. To give the pupils a better insight in the field of synthetic biology, we prepared project days in cooperation with the teachers. Our overall goal was to give them an understanding of synthetic biology and microbiology and introduce iGEM to them.

We gave a presentation about synthetic biology, our project and the iGEM competition in general and afterwards gave a safety instruction and performed some experiments with them. During the visits, we were happy to answer all of their upcoming questions as they got more and more in touch with synthetic biology, our project and iGEM.

Since we visited different grades with students of different ages, we adapted every presentation and each experiment to the particular school and their demands. After the experiments and the dialogue with the students we spend some time with the teachers to reflect on our visit. While talking to them we discovered the lack of possibilities for them to perform biological experiments in schools. To meet those needs, we created a collection of easy to understand experiments that do not require any specific equipment.

Figure 2: Two team members at "St. Ursula" school, Monschau.

Book of experiments (To view the pdf-file, please click here)

Monschau
We visited a girl’s school in Monschau on two days. First, we talked to several teachers to plan and prepare our visit. We benefit from the teacher’s hints about which topics might be interesting for the students. It was a great pedagogical experience for us, as we had to think of a way how to explain the biological topics to students who do not have a huge biological knowledge.
We thought a lot about it and in the end, it was a great success. We could evoke curiosity and the girls asked a lot of questions about Synthetic Biology and iGEM.

Aachen
Moreover, we visited the St. Ursula Gymnasium in Aachen and presented our work to students who already had a good biological background through their school. We created a new presentation for this purpose and experiments adjusted to their level of knowledge. It turned out that many students were interested in choosing a biology-related topic as their study field. This led us to explaining more about our university and talking about different subjects which are interesting for example Synthetic Biology. Later, we had a lively talk with the teachers who gave us some feedback and discussed the role of genetic engineering in Germany.

Düsseldorf
In Düsseldorf, in cooperation with two different schools, we organized a whole “Biotech-Day”. It was an and challenging experience for us because there were 89 students for whom we needed to do a lot of preparation. But luckily, with the help of the teachers we managed to plan the day. We did not only present the theoretical background of our project, but also put emphasis on safety aspects related to synthetic biology and the experiments. Hence, we were able to initiate interesting conversations and discussed both, our project idea and the practical work in the lab.
As we prepared some long term experiments, we visited the school again after 2 days and could show the results to them. On that day, they took the chance to ask more specific questions about about Synthetic Biology and our field of study. What looked like an overwhelming organizational challenge turned out to be a great experience with students not much younger than us.

Postcard Project

This year the iGEM Team Düsseldorf started a postcard project. Every participating team was encouraged to design their own, with the purpose to increase the knowledge about synthetic biology in the public. We thought it was a great idea, so we participated. These cards have first been distributed amongst all participating teams and then were distributed in different locations around each team’s hometown.

With our topic we wanted to inform people about synthetic biology and genetic engineering and show that they are present in their daily life, in an easily understandable way.
Here, we want to thank once again the iGEM Team Düsseldorf for this great idea and the invitation to participate.

Click on the postcard to see the back.

English translation:

"What does synthetic biology even mean?
The term “genetic engineering” is often mentioned in critical media reports and in this context cheese manufacturers more and more advertise with the promise that their products were made without this allegedly dangerous technology. We, as students of this field, would like to give you a better understanding of synthetic biology with the following example: Nowadays, you can find the declaration “without gene technology” on cheese packages. This does not refer to the actual ingredients of the product, but to the production method, so the cheese itself does not differ from “normal” one. Synthetic biology makes it possible to generate products with the help of genetically engineered microorganisms. In contrast, cheese without genetic engineering is produced with dried calf stomachs, which raises the question if this is more desirable.”

Inspiring the Next Generation

Figure 3: Visitors from "Jugend forscht" in Aachen.

“Jugend forscht” is a European science and technology competition for pupils, with more than 10,000 participants annually. The pupils work on a self-chosen project and present their results at regional levels and later at a national contest to an expert jury. Some winners of this competition were invited to Aachen and visited different scientific places. We organized a presentation and a tour through the laboratory for them. It was inspiring to see, what an immense interested and advanced knowledge about science they have already have.
After the presentation, we had a chance to talk about our project and the iGEM competition.
It was amazing to be able to enthuse these promising young people further for synthetic biology.

Writing Competition

In the German society knowledge about synthetic biology is not very widespread: we found out that the possibilities for people to inform themselves about synthetic biology are very limited which causes a mostly negative attitude towards this subject. Many are sceptical and focused more on the dangers than the possibilities. That’s why we wanted to give especially young people an exciting opportunity to get in touch with synthetic biology via a writing and arts competition - submissions of all group of ages were welcomed. Participants were encouraged to deal with aspects of synthetic biology in a creative way and express how they feel about it. Combining their great ideas with this topic led to amazing stories, which built a bridge between the scientific society and open minded people who were inspired to create their own opinion about synthetic biology.
The winner in our iGEM writing competition 2016 was Hannah Lanzrath with her story titled “14. Oktober 2044”.

Figure 4: Prize for the best story.

Here you can see a short abstract:

17. Oktober 2044
“…Einatmen. Ausatmen. Konzentrieren. Anna versuchte ihre Gedanken zu sammeln. Jedes Detail könnte wichtig, könnte hilfreich sein doch noch abzuwenden was unabwendbar schien. Zweimal positionierte Sie den Kugelschreiber in ihrer schweißnassen Hand neu, bevor sie die Kugel auf das Papier drückte. August – 2034 Damals regnerischer Sommer. Globale Erwärmung sorgt seit 1980 für stetigen Anstieg in Anzahl der Regentage und Niederschlagsmenge pro Jahr. Getreide und Gemüsefelder überwässert, 30% der Ernte fällt aus. Folge: Massenimport von Getreide aus China. Dort seit 15 Jahren etablierter Getreideanbau auf neu erschlossenen Inseln. Frage: Sporisorium Lamia beim Import eingetragen?
Sie blickte von dem Notizblock auf. Wortlos hatte ihr ein hagerer, erschöpft aussehender Mann einen Zeitungsartikel zugeschoben. „Noch mehr?“ brachte sie mit zusammengepressten Lippen hervor. ...“

“…Breath in. Breath out. Concentrate. Anna tried to gather her thoughts. Every detail could be important, helpful to turn away what seemed inevitable. Twice she tried to reposition the pen in her sweaty palms, before she pressed the ball onto the paper. August-2034 Rainy summer. Since 1980, global warming effects steady increase of days of rain annual amount of precipitation. Corn and vegetables fields flooded, 30% crop failure. Consequence: Mass import of corn from China. Since 15 years Established grain productions there on newly accessible islands. Question: Sporisorium Lamia instroduced via import?
She looked up from her notepad. Wordless, a gaunty exhaused looking man pushed a news paper article towards her. „Even more?“ she moaned between her teeth….“

We want to thank again all the participants of the competition. We hope you had as much fun as we had.

Team:Aachen/Engagement