Team:UGent Belgium/HP/Silver
Human Practices
Throughout the dewpal project we undertook several dissemination and communication activities to reach out to all relevant stakeholders in order to maximize its impact. Besides engaging the several stakeholders in order to translate our research into real-life applications, also responsible research and innovation were discussed and promoted. We assessed the different opportunities but also critically analyzed the different risks involved.
Academia
Several activities are being undertaken to inspire the youth to pursue a future in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). To this end we tried to make science, and synthetic biology in particularly, more attractive (notably to young people) and to increase society's appetite for innovation. Furthermore, we discussed our project with several experts in the various fields involved to improve our project and to help us with several aspects. Besides communication of our project and results to peers and the scientific community, we also discussed responsible innovation and research.
Seminars
- Synthetic Biology KUL April 15 2016
- Kick-off event Center of Synthetic Biology Ghent University September 16 2016
- PhD seminars October 17 2016 on the faculty of Bioscience engineering of UGent
Lectures
- Biological databases (Prof. Van Criekinge): student projects proposals (1st Master of Bioinformatics UGent)
- Predictive modelling (Michiel Stock): introduction into dewpal technology (2nd Master of Bioinformatics UGent)
Outreach
- UGent Faculty of Bioscience Engineering newsletter
- UGent Student newspaper Schamper
- Facebook page UGent Faculty of Bioscience Engineering
- Twitter page UGent Faculty of Bioscience Engineering
Experts input
- Prof. Dan Fernandez (CSUMB)
Uitleg Dan
- Kurt Van Houtte (FabLab)
Uitleg Kurt
- Ali Oğulcan Dülger (Timelab)
Uitleg Ali
Industry
Our iGEM team is strongly committed to explore effective exploitation of the dewpal project results. We initiated key contacts, by seminars, sponsoring and crowdfunding with angels, VCs in additional to valuable contacts in established environmental industries. As such we reached out to key players in the value chain:
Specialized media
- Interview with Digital trends
- 3Ders
- 3Dhoo
- Biovox (in press)
Outreach and expert input
We reached out to many companies and organisations in both the 3D-printing and biotechnology fields. This allowed us to investigate the interest and opinioins of experts. One of these experts is Deepak Mehta, from the 3D-printing company "3Dee". Deepak is an expert in the field of 3D-printing. Furthermore, he uses his creative and technological skills to educate the new generation of youth. We arranged a meeting to discuss our progress on designing and printing the collector. He provided some valuable insights in the important factors in 3D-printing, such as extruding temperature of our filament. He also mentioned some useful ways how we could efficiently test the filament at different temperatures. Furthermore he advised us some tweaks and features we could include in our design to further optimize the shape and durability of our collector. Lastly, he offered to print some of our collectors to present at the Jamboree.
Society
In our project we wanted to tackle a huge societal problem and demonstrate that innovative and cutting-edge technologies such as synthetic biology and 3D printing provide solutions. In order to reach the general public and to make them familiar with our project and synthetic biology in general, dissemination was done using modern, popular and interactive media:
- Interview with (inter)national popular media: De Knack (BE), De Volkskrant (NL), De Standaard , etc.
- Dewpal is present on social media, e.g. Facebook and Twitter
- Dewpal is on national television (VTM NIEUWS 18/10/2016):
