Zika Summit 2016
The Zika Summit was a meeting sponsored by the Institut Pasteur, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Wellcome Trust that brought together scientists and public health professionals around the world working on Zika. On this occasion, we had the opportunity to present our project to professionals working on this arbovirus and made contacts that resulted in fruitful collaborations.
CIBU lab meeting
Cellule d’Intervention Biologique d’Urgence (CIBU) is the Urgent Response to Biological Threats division at the Institut Pasteur, supervised by Dr. Jean-Claude Manuguerra. We presented our project in front of all members of the CIBU lab and exchanged ideas about our method of detection, our global device, and the intellectual property protection offered at iGEM during the Q & A session that followed our talk.
Young Researchers in Life Sciences
The The Young Researchers in Life (YRLS) is a conference organized by young researchers (PhD, Post-docs, and junior faculty) that feature an interactive program, which includes poster sessions, talks, and round tables designed for other fellow young researchers. The wide variety of represented disciplines and topics allows attendees to deepen their knowledge of their own research field while broadening their horizons. We had the opportunity to present a poster of our project at the conference.
introduction to labWORK FOR middle school student
The idea was to show in a very concrete way laboratory manipulations to middle school students. We performed bacterial culture and staining and plasmid DNA isolation, as well as protein crystal observations were conducted. The school science, technology, and math teachers were also present. Gender equality in science observation and reporting was also one of the points that was highlighted during the sessions.
Mos(kit)o GAME AT THE GERMAINE DE STAËL SCHOOL
Our team visited the Germaine de Staël Middle School in order to familiarize students to the raising issue of arboviruses and with our project. We started the day with a quiz and general presentation about mosquitoes and the diseases they transmit before simulating the scenario of our project through a game-like activity. They were asked to imagine a trap design matching our requirements and then search for mosquitoes in mock-up traps placed in the playground, according to a prior explained affinity map (i.e., forest, lakes, homes, swamps).
"jeu à débattre" with the association "arbre des connaissances"
On Thursday June 16th, the iGEM Pasteur team attended a "Jeu à débattre" hosted by the association, "arbre des connaissances". This was a debate practice or round table discussion where several synthetic biology innovations were made available to a few villages. The inhabitants had to decide the pros and cons of acquiring them, considering environmental, economical, and health benefits. Our role was to advise the players during the game and to moderate a little debate about synthetic biology and the ethical and moral questions it raises. We also addressed patenting aspects, as viewed from the point of view of French and US Law.
Meeting with Anna-Bella Falloux
We met Dr. Anna-Bella Failloux (entomologist, head of Arboviruses and Insect Vectors (AIV) research unit in the department of virology at Institut Pasteur) to have detailed information on mosquito ecology/habitat (types: aedes, culex) and behavior during feeding ventures (anthropophily, hematophagy).
Rathenau Institut
The Ratheneau Institute « promotes the formation of political and public opinion on science and technology" in cooperation with Synenergene, a European project that aims to foster an open dialogue on responsible research and innovation in synthetic biology. After winning the Synenergene grant for collaboration, we worked with Mrs. Zoe Robae from the institute, who was a great help for the development of our applicationand technomoral SCENARIO Since July, the Rathenau Institut helped us to develop our project by guiding us on the steps for our scenarios. With their support and advice, we could develop an Application Scenario and Technomoral Scenario. !
The European experience
We participated in the meet-up hosted by our friends from iGEM Ionis and iGEM Evry that took place at the Ionis School in Paris. We had the opportunity to meet other European teams, to present our project, and to learn about theirs during a poster session.
Presentation at the ENSCI
After a couple introductory lectures on research in design, biomaterials, and synthetic biology we presented the Mos(kit)o project at the ENSCI-Les Ateliers school. This is one of the top design schools in the World (Red Dot Award winner 2015).
Meeting with Civic drone
Civic Drone is a company specialized in the making of civil drones using expertise in the fields of aeronautics, aerodynamics, electronics, and computing. We met with the CEO of the company, Mr. Edouard Guilhot-Gaudeffroy and one of the company’s R&D engineers. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss with professionals to have more accurate information concerning the use of drones, in view of implementing them into our project in order to access remote areas with impassable/impracticable terrain or difficult climate.
Presentation about Intellectual property law
Our intellectual property law students (from Paris Sud university) Claudia, Victoire and Victor gave a presentation in front of the team and Sandrine Daniel, (head of the legal and human resources department of Institut Pasteur) about intellectual property law and the open science aspect of the iGEM competition. The aim was to generate discussion and to toss around ideas about our project’s valorization in the future.
Meet-up Ile-de-France
With help from two other Parisian teams, iGEM Paris Saclay and iGEM IONIS, we hosted the iGEM Ile-de-France Meet-Up at the Institut Pasteur. This event was the highlight of our summer. The attendees of the Meet-Up were members from the iGEM Paris Bettencourt, iGEM Evry, iGEM Ionis, iGEM UPMC (IMPACT), iGEM Aix-Marseille, and iGEM Paris Saclay teams.
Meeting with EID
We arranged for a conference call with Dr. Grégory Lambert, medical entomologist and coordinator at the EID (Entente Interdépartementale de Démoustication / Interdepartmental Mediterranean board for the control of mosquito). He is in charge of the fight against mosquito epidemics. This meeting resulted in very constructive advice for our project and has allowed us to work in a more targeted way.
Presentation for AMGEN students
The Amgen Scholars Program at Institut Pasteur provides twenty undergraduate students from European Universities with the opportunity to work under supervision on research projects during an eight-week summer internship at Institut Pasteur. We gave a presentation on our project and communicated about synthetic biology and its many uses. Our presentation was to inform young researchers about Synthetic biology and its many uses, but also to present our project.
Festival du vivant
This festival, through exhibits, talks, and workshops brought together people from different horizons to meet and discuss. There were displays of devices and many different concepts related to economy, health, agriculture or environment were discussed. We presented the 3D printed models of the Mos(kit)o device made by our design students from ENSCI-Les Ateliers. We presented a poster, which gave us a chance to exchange ideas with a very diverse audience
For more information go to the sections: Collaborations, Meetup, Education and public "Engagement", and Law.