Difference between revisions of "Team:Cambridge-JIC/Engagement"

 
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     <center><h1 style="font-family:'Montserrat'; line-height:1.295em">ENGAGEMENT</h1></center>
 
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         <a href="#docubricks" class="darkBlue" style="font-family: 'Pacifico'"><h2 style="text-align: center">Planting the seed for future iGEM-ers</h3></a>
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         <a href="#docubricks" class="darkBlue" style="font-family: 'Shrikhand'"><h2 style="text-align: center">Planting the seed for future iGEM-ers</h3></a>
 
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     <p style="font-family:Arvo ; font-size:160%; text-align:center">In order to integrate best practices for open hardware design within our protocols, we spoke to Tobias Wenzel, co-founder of <a href="http://docubricks.com/" class="darkBlue" style="font-size:100%;">DocuBricks</a>; a website for high quality open source documentation, funded by the OpenPlant program. See what we discussed in the interview:</p>
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     <p style="font-family:'Roboto Condensed'; font-size:150%">In early September, we visited one of our team’s former secondary schools, Watford Grammar School for Girls, to deliver a talk about the future of chloroplast engineering to over 60 members of staff and science & maths students from years 10-13.</p>
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    <p style="font-family:'Roboto Condensed'; font-size:150%">The presentation included a brief background to the iGEM competition and synthetic biology, discussing the concepts of standardisation and open science as these were both new areas for the students to learn about. Using examples of previous iGEM team’s projects, we showed how diverse the areas of interest and tracks in the competition can be, and the vast potential of synthetic biology in solving real world issues.</p>
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         <img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2016/4/4c/T--Cambridge-JIC--engagement_1.png" style="display:block; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto; max-width:100%; max-height:100%; padding:2% 0%;">
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        <h2 style="font-family:Pacifico ; text-align: center">How we integrated this into our design:</h2>
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    <p style="font-family:'Roboto Condensed'; font-size:150%">This then led us onto the subject of our own project this year: chloroplast engineering in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. We captivated the students’ imagination by discussing the potential of this technology, with applications in areas such as healthcare, energy production and biomaterials, but also explained the main bottlenecks currently hindering the field. This included the issue of democratising the technology for laboratories around the world to have access to, and how our low cost hardware is tackling this. The students particularly engaged with this part of our project, asking many questions about the process of designing and building such hardware in our Q&A session after the talk. It was particularly promising to see how the students understood the interdisciplinary nature of our project and the field of synthetic biology, when they had held the previous impression it was an area only suited for academics in lab coats all day.</p>
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          <p style="font-family:Arvo; font-size:130%; text-align:center">Neglect of safety features in open source protocols  - as well as the features already included in our designs from community lab feedback, such as contained electrical connections and safety shields, we included instructions on how users can conduct <span class="darkBlue">isolated safety checks</span> when building our hardware. For example, underwater pressure testing of the gun and checking of electrical circuits.</p>
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          <p style="font-family:Arvo; font-size:130%; text-align:center">Encouragement of designers to document their hardware properly - in addition to our own protocols, we have included <span class="darkBlue">links on our wiki to DocuBricks</span> and an easy-to-follow <span class="darkBlue">checklist of components</span> for anyone considering writing their own open source protocol.</p>
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    <p style="font-family:'Roboto Condensed'; font-size:150%">Explaining how we had achieved all of this as only 10 undergraduates, with one of our team having been in the place of the sixth form students just two years ago, really engaged with our audience. It was particularly rewarding to have a queue of students at the end of the talk asking for advice on choosing university courses which would allow them to get involved in an iGEM project in the future.</p>
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          <p style="font-family:Arvo; font-size:130%; text-align:center">Adaptability of our design for different end users - including <span class="darkBlue">alternative supplier links</span> for parts, where possible, to suit international users of the hardware and also providing an alternative in case the primarily-suggested supplier is out of stock.</p>
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    <p style="font-family:'Roboto Condensed'; font-size:150%">We aimed to promote the field of chloroplast engineering through this event, and walked away feeling confident that the issue of lack of motivation for research into the field will be solved by these iGEMers and synthetic biologists of the future inspired from our project.</p>
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          <p style="font-family:Arvo; font-size:130%; text-align:center">Used open source software when designing CAD files for parts of the gene gun and growth facility, so these files can be downloaded and customised by anyone.</p>
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Latest revision as of 10:54, 7 October 2016

Cambridge-JIC

ENGAGEMENT

Planting the seed for future iGEM-ers

In early September, we visited one of our team’s former secondary schools, Watford Grammar School for Girls, to deliver a talk about the future of chloroplast engineering to over 60 members of staff and science & maths students from years 10-13.

The presentation included a brief background to the iGEM competition and synthetic biology, discussing the concepts of standardisation and open science as these were both new areas for the students to learn about. Using examples of previous iGEM team’s projects, we showed how diverse the areas of interest and tracks in the competition can be, and the vast potential of synthetic biology in solving real world issues.

This then led us onto the subject of our own project this year: chloroplast engineering in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. We captivated the students’ imagination by discussing the potential of this technology, with applications in areas such as healthcare, energy production and biomaterials, but also explained the main bottlenecks currently hindering the field. This included the issue of democratising the technology for laboratories around the world to have access to, and how our low cost hardware is tackling this. The students particularly engaged with this part of our project, asking many questions about the process of designing and building such hardware in our Q&A session after the talk. It was particularly promising to see how the students understood the interdisciplinary nature of our project and the field of synthetic biology, when they had held the previous impression it was an area only suited for academics in lab coats all day.

Explaining how we had achieved all of this as only 10 undergraduates, with one of our team having been in the place of the sixth form students just two years ago, really engaged with our audience. It was particularly rewarding to have a queue of students at the end of the talk asking for advice on choosing university courses which would allow them to get involved in an iGEM project in the future.

We aimed to promote the field of chloroplast engineering through this event, and walked away feeling confident that the issue of lack of motivation for research into the field will be solved by these iGEMers and synthetic biologists of the future inspired from our project.