Team:Marburg/Hessentag
SynDustry Fuse. Produce. Use.
Hessentag
Since introducing modern biotechnological approaches such as Synthetic Biology to public is an important and fun undertaking, the whole iGEM team Marburg 2016 went to the German Hessentag 2016. It took place in Herborn, Hessen this year.
The Hessentag is a cultural event that unites the various regions of Hessen. Since 1961, the number of visitors increased from 40.000 to over 1 million during the 10-day-long event. The program is nearly inexhaustible from cultural aspects like live music to family-friendly education such as our purpose. The Hessentag provides an excellent forum to discuss with and educate interested people about advanced biological topics in a comprehensible way. Therefore, biology becomes more present for children, parents, grandparents and even whole families - finally the whole society.
This year, we offered multiple activities introducing to hands-on experiments work that teach concepts of biology. The extraction of onions’ DNA as well as microscopy of algae were the central activities: Only a few family-friendly steps with household items lead to the visualization of the building blocks of life (genetic code called DNA). By that, we were able to also explain the kids what DNA is. The microscopy showed various algae that can be found in local waters - taken from the “Culture Collection of Algae” of the Philipps University Marburg. Finally, we did not only show pictures of the daily lab life but also brought some extraordinary giveaways: special algae that light up once they are gently shaken during the night and thus, act as biological night lights; including a manual to ensure safe usage. After having dived into the world of science - in form of our prepared activities - the kids could dress up as real scientists. Including lab coats, pipettes and goggles - not only normal but also laser protective goggles! We made the kids and parents have a good time and fanned interest in science.
Educational tradition in Marburg is an important concept: Visiting the Hessentag as the whole iGEM team started early on in the iGEM history of Marburg. Since 2013, the teams have kept the tradition to attend this family event in order to spread the inspiring moments science provides. Teaching the smallest today’s science can ultimately affect their whole lives through igniting the interest in science.
Besides these scientific activities, we explained the so called LOEWE program that was initialized in Hessen. It supports and maintains excellent research in Hessen and therefore underlines the great scientific future of the area. In particular, we represented the Centre for Synthetic Biology in Marburg – called SynMikro. The whole event took place under the slogan “Hessen schafft Wissenschaft” (German for “Hessen creates science”) [1].
We were happy to welcome high class politicians such as Ingmar Jung. He is State Secretary at the Hessian Department of Sciences and Arts. We were given the opportunity to discusse with Mr. Jung about the connection between politics and science in Hessen and he was eager to learn about our experiments.
The resonance was amazing in terms of how many people visited us but also how deep their interest was. People who are normally not very much affected by cutting-edge biological science were very interested. We feel that our work at the Hessentag brought science closer to the life of many and arose interest. This can finally change a person’s life if sticking to a scientific career. Furthermore we experienced how sharing knowledge is universal and connects various generations. We noticed our personal growth during the task of teaching the amazing facts of nowadays’ science to the youngest, oldest and every generation in-between.
Concluding, this visit of the Hessentag proved to be a very suitable forum to spread the scientific mindset. We don’t want to conceal aspects to improve that will help future teams: In the course of explaining DNA through the hands-on activity, some models to grasp would be very beneficial to simplify (a) the explanation of DNA to kids and (b) educate through a haptic channel as well.
