Team:NCKU Tainan/Engagement
Expecting to dedicate more ideas into iGEM
Sep. 21, 2016, was not as any ordinary day, iGEM NCKU_Tainan had successfully accomplished our first mission together, the member recruitment. At that time, our team consisted of 14 members from different faculties, such as Medical Department, Faculty of Social Sciences, Faculty of Sciences, Department of Engineering, Design Department etc, but we realized that it was not enough for our team. As a result, we searched for more people with hidden potential to join us after the recruitment. This formed our team which has a greater diversity of cross-disciplinary professions.
A quite empty hall
It’s undeniable that there are many challenges and difficulties for member recruitment. ln particular, when it comes to the complicated genetically engineered machines competitions, students without the medical and engineering background would definitely hold back. How did we change their mindset? How did we change the perspectives of these students? We encountered our first challenge: Are people willing to listen to us?
Although Sep. 28, 2016 was a terrible day in Taiwan due to the typhoon, it was a big day for our team. We met one of the most prestigious scientists in synthetic biology, Dr. Zhang Feng!!
Dr. Zhang's breakthrough in CRISPR/Cas9 literally brings gene editing to a whole new level.
It is our honor to meet him to know more about synthetic biology. Luckily, Dr. Zhang had also participated iGEM as a team coach in Stanford University. We, therefore, received enthusiastic feedback and advice about our project. This short conversation is the valuable and life-changing experience which is truly encouraging us considerably.
We met one of our sponsors, Diamond Biofund, and showed what we had done on our project. It’s exciting to cooperate with them. With their help, confirmation and support, we can process our products much more confidently and smoothly. Because of these strong backups, we successfully achieved our goals which allow us spreading the concept of diabetes prevention through education as well as introducing our device to the market. The prevention of diabetes is important, but how? We will let you know.
We also had Skype conversations with another iGEM team from University of Sydney, because both our projects are regarding Diabetes. Thanks to the advanced technology, it makes the cross-border communication and sharing much easier. Within the Skype sessions, the two teams gave suggestions and feedback to each other. We also shared lots of interesting phenomena happened in the lab and gave each other support for solving the problems. Just a small message to them: “Hey guys, hope all of you are doing well. Ssee you soon during the iGEM Jamboree!”
Collaboration with Taiwan’s greatest genetic media - GeneOnline
GeneOnline had thoroughly introduced us from our urine glucose detection and safety Biobricks parts, our bacterial design, comparison with current Diabetes monitoring tools, our Human Practices to the functionality, prototype and ideas of our device and also the Asia-Pacific conference that we hosted this summer. It’s our honor to collaborate with GeneOnline! Through GeneOnline, we can proudly announced that our project aim to enhance prevention of diabetes and raise social awareness of this ever-growing issue.
