Overview

The educational platform for 200 high schools in Denmark has now been launched!

Our human practice strategy is largely build upon a desire to reach beyond the iGEM community and spark an interest of synthetic biology in high school students in Denmark.

In Denmark, it is not possible for high school students to work with purification of plasmids due to controversial rules issued by the Danish Ministry of Education. As a consequence, very limited knowledge is passed unto the students about synthetic biology and many will only encounter this exciting field when attending university.

We want to change this!

The DTU iGEM team 2015 sketched out the first steps and initiated an exciting project that would allow high school students to work with BioBricks overcoming the Danish rules by using 3A assembly of the parts. The DTU BioBuilders team 2016 picked up where last years team let go. With a funding of 300.000 DKK (45.000 USD) from NEB for Biosensor kits and 300.000 DKK (45.000 USD) from Novozymes it was possible to send out kits to the Danish high schools allowing them to create their own customized Biosensors. Elaboration of the project is presented under “Biosensor” beneath.

Our other human practices relied on the same philosophy, namely spreading the word of synthetic biology through different events and social media. This lead to exciting outreaches which can all be explored below.

Biosensor - Educational Platform for Highschools

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High Schoolers

“I could see a great potential of getting an amazing experience which would challenge and develop my skills within biotechnology” - Rasmus, 16.

During the summer, the DTU BioBuilders fetched reinforcements in the form of three amazing high school students. Our three students, Sigrid, Tobias and Rasmus helped us out in the lab and gained valuable skills which will be of great value for them in their future studies.

“The project seemed like a great opportunity to get some laboratory experience and I hoped for an educational experience by participating in an official research project” - Sigrid, 17.

It was important for the team not to exclude anyone from getting the opportunity to learn a lot during the summer and being a part of our team. This is reflected in the background of the three high school students, who are enrolled at three different high schools and had various experience with laboratory work and biotechnology in general.

“I would like to experience the laboratory work in projects like this and improve my competences” - Tobias, 19

Common for all of them, though, was the eagerness to learn, their enthusiasm about the project and their ability to ask questions and challenge us on our basic biotechnology knowledge and skills!

We asked Sigrid, Tobias and Rasmus after the summer: “What was the best part about joining the DTU iGEM team?”

“The best thing about my participation throughout the summer, is the insight that I’ve gotten about the research process in science and what I’ve learned about how to genetically manipulate microorganisms, which is awesome! It’s now more clear what I want to do later in my education.” - Rasmus, 16.

“It has been a good opportunity to learn by doing and pick the brains of the students who have been part of the project. We were allowed to work on our own, resulting in a greater experience and understanding. My participation in the project has contributed to a change of my future plans concerning my education” - Tobias, 19.

“I was pleasantly surprised by how much I was allowed to participate in the experiments. It has been so much fun to try new laboratory techniques and improve my experimental skills on a project with more freedom than the regular high school experiments.Working on the project has definitely already helped me in my biotech classes, as I learned a couple of things over the summer that have been very applicable in my regular education” - Sigrid, 17.

Green Challenge - Think Big, Think new, Think green

“It is becoming increasingly important for future generations of engineers to integrate themes such as sustainability and the environment” - Green Challenge, DTU.dk

Green challenge is an annual event hosted by DTU and give students all over the world the opportunity to showcase their brilliant ideas for projects within sustainability, environment and climate technology.

This year the DTU Biobuilders participated and presented our project “Yeastilization - from waste to value” in front of many bio-interested students and professors. The event was a great opportunity for us to tell about our project and share our passion of biotechnology with like minded.

DTU BlueDot

The DTU BioBuilders team is recognized by DTU as a “Blue Dot Project”. DTU Blue Dot is the story of a sustainable society, where students work as real-life engineers.

Being a DTU Blue Dot project is great honour which shows that DTU acknowledge the work that we put into iGEM and the importance of the projects that we contrive.

“The name ’Blue Dot’ refers to the Earth, which - although it is huge - looks like a small blue dot when viewed from space. While big ideas can appear simple and tangible when seen from the outside, from the inside they are often rather intricate and complex. The name ’Blue Dot’ thus also refers to an engineer’s ability to remain focus and see the big picture while simultaneously delving into the details in order to solve problems and challenges.” - DTU

Open House

The open house event at DTU is a possibility for younger students to visit the University to hear about the study lines and meet students already enrolled at DTU. We seized this great opportunity for us to impact students even before they are attending university, and of course spread the word about synthetic biology and the cool things we are doing in the iGEM competition.

Integrated Human Practices

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