The largest Dutch national conference where scientists, journalists and other science communicators could meet up was this year once again held in Amsterdam. As small-scale scientists, participants of iGEM, and of course as scientists of the future, we participated in the Bessensap conference.

Starting of pitching our project to the audience, we gained positive feedback from interested parties. The day was filled with inspiring talks and workshops. For example the keynote speaker talked about activism in science, arguing all scientists should be activists and changing the future for the better. For this, examples were given showing the importance of communication of different perceptions. This also holds for the iGEM competition, where this immediately could be used in our Policy and Practice. Concluding this inspiring day, a final collaboration in public relations was initiated.

On 1 – 3 June, the whole campus of the TU Delft was dedicated to bridging the gap between technology, art and music during the International Festival of Technology. The programme consisted of some famous music artists, lectures by scientists and showcasing all art and technology projects of the university and its students. Of course, we as an iGEM team also took part in this amazing event. Since we were working with fluorescence, our project was incorporated in a night tour through the university. The tour went past all hidden treasures of the university, such as the anechoic chamber, and the iGEM lab which were specially illuminated for the occasion. Other students made use of lights and beamers, we used fluorescence, of course!

The tour was completely sold out so there were a lot of people to amaze and educate with our project! The public got to take a look in the world of fluorescence and learned some fun facts on DNA while we could promote our project. There was also an fluffy E. coli giveaway for the person who could most precisely estimate how often you can go to the moon and back with all DNA of one adult. A lot of people were not aware of the (laser)capacities of microorganisms, but the reaction of the crowd was very positive and enthusiastic, which is of course very good to hear! We are happy that we got to inspire and amaze so many people in just one night, and we hope that our Opticoli will continue to do so!

The Netherlands Biotechnology Conference (NBC) is the largest conference for researchers and companies related to biotechnology. This year’s edition with the theme “next level biotechnology” was held in Wageningen. Other than inspiring talks and discussions, we got to meet up with other iGEM teams from the Netherlands. It was interesting to see what the other teams picked as a topic and how they enjoyed the first period of iGEM so far. Overall, it was an informative day and we are looking forward to see the other teams again!