Team:Leiden/events

Events

May 28th 2016 - Night at the Museum

Considering the extraordinary amount of culture and history in Leiden, the city is stacked with museums. There is a museum of natural history, a museum with art from the Dutch Golden Age and even a museum which is centered around the human body. Lots of people come to visit these museums every year, and students are given free acces. But there is on special annual event which connects all of them; the Night at the Museums Every year, a group of students organises the Night at the Museums. Here, the museums stay open until after midnight, and each museum is a host for countless activities. We, iGEM Leiden, had the honour to entertain and enlighten visitors in the city’s old orrery.

Our main act, was letting visitors create bio-art. Bio-art, being the beautiful patterns one can form by letting colonies of coloured bacteria grow on petri-dishes. Aside from our main act, we conducted surveys. These surveys gauged how people view synthetic biology and its applications. Furthermore, we also exhibited the machine that simulates zero gravity for our organisms. There was also a homemade laser projection-microscope. This microscope allowed people to see microbes move around in a drop of water. To top it all off, we told everybody about our fantastic project and how we hope to help with the colonisation of Mars.

August 16th 2016 - Culture Carousel Introductory Week

Each year, thousands of new students arrive in Leiden. Each and every student has to find his/her place in this city, aside from getting used to studying. To make everyone feel at home, there is an introductory week in Leiden to help people fit in. During this week, students are put into groups together. Each group contains students from at least two different -and often completely opposite- studies. An example is Physics and Psychology. These groups tour around Leiden, doing all kinds of fun activities, like canoeing, partying and board games. There is also a batch of Cultural activities taking place in the ‘Van Der Werf’ park. We were invited to perform during this carousel of activities. We will mainly make bio-art with people, like we did during Night at the Museums.

T.B.A (Fall 2016) - Performance @ The Museon

The Museon in The Hague is a popular scientific museum. This summer and fall, they want to make exhibitions with topics that are very current in science. One such topic is synthetic biology. We approached them with the question whether we could work together on this exhibition. Their plan is to let us design the exhibition, after which they will build it.

September 17th - Night of Art and Knowledge

The Night of Art and Knowledge is very similar to the Night at the Museums. However, we think that this night fits our topic a little better. Here we will basically do the same thing as during the Night at the Museums. Considering the date, we are nearing the end of our iGEM project. This means that we get to present what we did to the public. We can dedicate this night much more to our mission on Mars much more than during the Night at the Museums.