Difference between revisions of "Team:Freiburg/Human Practices"

Human Practices

This year, Freiburg’s iGEM team intends to spread the awareness of Synthetic biology in the public. It doesn’t only mean to speak to students and academic people about our project, but also include talking to people of professions other than scientific research. We started with a collaboration with the university’s radio program to share our visions and ideas with students through a radio interview.

We talk about iGEM, synthetic biology and the basics of our project. Our motivation is to get the synthetic biology and the iGEM competition closer to public. We believe that the state of the art of scientific research is a rapid development that also concerns students from other majors. For example, do the history students of your university know anything about promotors, the bacteria used in drug development or even in their dairy products? ;)

Next, we want to find out what the people out there think about our application. While working in the lab is essential for success and progress in your project, you might forget to think about what your product will look like in real life conditions, what actually the use for consumers and patients is! If you develop an assay, will it be practical enough to be used in an efficient way? If you improve a drug, will it be too expensive for the public? Would anyone trust a medical product with bacterial spores? Are there any drawbacks you don’t think of? Find it out – ask people who are not professional scientists and those opinions and suggestions will make our project fit better to public expectations.

Survey about synthetic biology and the basics of our project

Since our project has a highly medical relevance, we are also interested in the professional medical input doctors and scientic clinicans give us. Therefore, we conducted interviews with dermatologists and gastroenterologist who helped us to get new input.