Team:NCKU Tainan/Integrated Practices
Introduction
The 4th iGEM Asia-Pacific Conference 2016 Taiwan was organized by iGem NCKU and held grandly at National Cheng Kung University Tainan from Aug. 8, 2016 to Aug. 14. We, iGEM NCKU, are the first university from the southern Taiwan to attend iGEM Competition organized by MIT, Boston. By involving in Synthetic Biology and iGEM Competition, our team is confident to make a breakthrough in this field via multidisciplinary cooperation and can proudly present our work on the international platform. In turn, this Asia-Pacific Conference was the first step for us to introduce the idea to other teams from different countries in Asia.
We invited 20 teams from different schools in five countries to this Meet-up Conference. Professional scholars and entrepreneurs were also invited to provide us academic knowledge and suggestions. The approaches for meeting people and expanding ideas in this conference are presentations, poster exhibitions, team experience sharing, Round table, and Tainan cultural tours. After this Asia-Pacific Academic Exchange Conference, we believe that we make others understand our intension and indeed makes NCKU a step closer to spreading the idea universally.
Team's Project
Several presentations were made by the professors and representatives of our sponsor. Besides, our team presentation which was about our device was also performed to gain valuable feedback from the audience. This 20-minute English presentation, including the present and future research, objective, device and Q&A session.
Poster
There was a poster presentation from every team to enable every team sharing their research works and findings.
One very exciting part in Asia-Pacific Conference is a variety of workshops to share attendees’ thinking. Within the workshop, attendees were randomly grouped. One member from iGEM NCKU_Tainan led the group discussion to elicit their iGEM experience along the iGEM journey. In those sharings and discussions, we could view the problems from other districts, culture and society.
Light up: We can share positive stories, experiences, uniqueness, management tips, etc so that other teams can refer to.
Dark side: We also share failures and downfalls in order to help us learn from mistakes. We realized that everything will be all right in the end. If it’s not all right then it’s not the end. So finding out the solution to work it out is the best way.
The Round Table was hosted by professors or representatives of entrepreneurs to guide the participants to think out of the box. One of very crucial goals in this program is to share and raise people’s critical awareness. The experts offered the valuable knowledge and suggestions. to back up the awareness development.
Except the suggestion form other iGEMers and professionals, we also hope to hear more from ordinary people. Our team knows the ultimate goal of human practice is to give rise to the awareness of diabetes. By doing the questionnaire, we understood the common mistakes about diabetes or the challenges for diabetes management.
We aim to pin point what Diabetes is about and also to clarify the myths that most people misunderstood about Diabetes. Our video is made in our mother tongue language which is very local where we received tons of positive feedback from the viewers in our hometown. They said that this video was funny and the context was easy to understand. At the same time, we wish to act locally and spread universally; therefore, we inserted the Chinese and English subtitles that matched our motto “Think globally, act locally, and spread universally.
Insulin is beneficial or harmful to health? Some patients think that injection of insulin may cause dialysis, but it is not.
The common complication after diagnosed with diabetes.
Can we prevent diabetes by early detection of urine glucose level?
The limitations and cons of urine glucose test strips.
Feedbacks and suggestion for our device.
If glucose exist in urine, is it present that the patient has diabetes?
We do our best to advocate the correct perspectives. Therefore, we arranged the interview with Dr. Ou to inquire about the correct concept of diabetes. Dr. Ou is the Associate Professor, Visiting Staff, Vs, and also director of Division of Metabolism & Endocrinology in our university. He graduated as a PhD from Institute of Clinical Medicine of National Cheng kung University.Within the interview, we obtained many useful clarifications for the common diabetic myths as well as received constructive opinions and suggestions for our device. We’re so grateful that Dr. Ou was able to spend time doing this interview with us.
Our iGEM team paid a visit to Prof. Chen. It is our pleasure to discuss with such an enthusiastic scholar, who offered us valuable information and advice, such as an useful data analysis program, additional references. The best part is to encourage us to continually work hard in this field. Thanks to Prof. Chen’s encouragement, we could take on challenges and do our best to overcome every difficulty!
