Revision as of 21:15, 14 October 2016

Human Practices

Four team members (Amanda, Katie, Asia, and Brianna) visited a local middle school and taught 60 seventh graders the basics of DNA and synthetic biology. They were able to extract DNA from strawberries using common household products. After this activity, the iGEM team members explained the results and answered the students’ questions. From this discussion period, the group was able to observe the students’ understanding of the project and their varying opinions. The four members asked the students what their thoughts were on the ethics and morals involved in synthetic biology. For a short period, contemporary advances of synthetic biology were discussed, comprising the future growth and possibilities of the rapidly proliferating field of study. Attached are links to our PowerPoint and lab instructions.

October 5th visiting day outreach

Prospective students visited our school and we hosted a pipetting and synthetic biology workshop. We did this in order to inform the prospective students about our science department and our iGEM project and lab practices. Each middle school student was equipped with a P20 micropipette, lab coats, gloves, and mock-gels. After a demonstration by one of our teammates, and a brief explanation of how micropipettes are used in the lab, the students then practiced pipetting various volumes of red dye into the practice gels. This practice session was followed with a more in depth presentation of our iGEM project and the importance of synthetic biology.

Meetups

Our team participated in several meetups, both in person and digitally. As a first-year team, we were able to gain invaluable insight on our project and helpful advice. We met with University College London, Lambert High School, and the Peshawar team via Google Hangouts and had quite interesting conversations. We also met up with the ULV/CV/LC, a local team at our lab as well as attending the southern California meetup at UCLA.

University College London

When we digitally communicated with UCL, we had the great pleasure of meeting Amandeep who graciously gave us advice for our project. She helped us solve some of our crucial issues and helped us troubleshoot a few complications we ran into.

Lambert

The Lambert team in Georgia is another high school group we met up with. They gave us advice on supplying/materials and the technicalities of our project.

Peshawar

We talked with Sara from the Peshawar team via Google Hangouts in the beginning of August. We were able to exchange tips by explaining our projected timeline and how they can implicate the way we work on our project into theirs.

UCLA

UCLA was the host of the 2016 iGEM SoCal meetup where we met with several other teams including UCSD, ULV/LC/CV, and a representative of the Marburg Team in Germany. There we received critical feedback of our project and were able to come up with creative new fundraising ideas.

ULV/LC/CV

The LaVerne, La Canada, and Crescenta Valley team is a joint high school and college group located near us. We met at the UCLA meetup and since then have continued to communicate with them. We have created plans to reach out to other high schools in the area to propagate knowledge and interest in synthetic biology.

Future Plans

We plan to create a possible outreach system with the ULV/LC/CV as a way to get our school and other schools more involved in synthetic biology research. We plan on visiting other campuses in order to show them the extent of iGEM and demonstrate its significance in the world of research.