Team:Aix-Marseille/events
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Events
Our team was committed to provide community engagement activities that are inspiring and fun, as well as educative and interactive.
We focused on interventions in public events (Science fair, Science festival...) as well as scientific events: the French Meet-Up and the biotechnology forum. Our take-home messages were: Tiger mosquitoes and arboviral diseases awareness, ARBO-BLOCK project, iGEM values, and synthetic biology.
For the welcoming day of the scientific bachelor at the Faculty of Science of Aix-Marseille University, Marion Isoard, Bill Makem, Nicola Pordone and Marion Holmière were greeting the new students at Luminy Campus. Scientifics stands were the last point of the track game taking place in the Calanques and organized by Aix-Marseille University.
During this day, we explain to them what the iGEM competition is, what synthetic biology is and how we can use this tool to create a project on our own, and our project by showing them our promotion video. We also motivated new recruits for the 2022 iGEM competition, even if they still have five years to integrate Team AMU.
We have our mascot ready, and we use it to attract students. To help finalize the project we also took the opportunity to distribute some flyers to them to answer our survey.
Lumexplore 2021 is a scientific and environmental exploration film festival organized each year since 2016 at La Ciotat, France. The goal of this festival is to encourage and sensitize the new generations to environmental protection. During four days, conferences, movies, activities, and expositions about recent research and solutions to preserve our biosphere were presented.
iGEM Aix Marseille University participated in this event to (1) present the 2021 project ARBO-BLOCK (2) to collect people's opinions on our design/solution thanks to our flyers and QR code to answer to our survey (3) sensitize the younger ones to biology by setting up an activity of DNA extraction from different fruits (tomato, banana…) and (4) sensitize to laboratory equipment used during our research thanks to the mystery box. This latest activity is a box where we put a piece of equipment from the laboratory and thanks to a list with pictures, children have to find by touching in the box (by passing their hands through the holes of the box) what object was hidden inside. For this occasion, journalists were present and our mascot was interviewed by TVF Sud, despite its stress, it could tell the story and the project of ARBO-BLOCK 2021 in front of the camera.
This experience allows us to also participate in film viewing and conferences. And in particular, the COVID Conference with Hélène Soubelet vet and director of the Diversity Research Foundation, was interesting for our project.
At the end of September the “Centre Régional des Oeuvres Universitaires et Scolaires - CROUS or ”Regional Center for University and School Works, organized a large gathering of students on campus. A lot of student associations were setting up a stand and also other organizations such as UNICEF, the national park of Calanques.
On that occasion, we presented our project “ARBO-BLOCK” to the students of the university’s sciences department. From noon to 4 p.m we discuss with those who showed interest in our stand. As usual, the mascot was present and ready to meet students and encourage them to follow us on social networks and talk about our project. We explained the main objectives of the project along with the details of how we were planning to achieve them. Many students express their admiration of the project as a new and innovative way to rid the world of diseases carried by mosquitoes without damaging the environment. Some students also showed interest in joining iGEM next year’s team. A particular student originally from the French Caribbean shared with us his experience with mosquitoes and diseases.
The event greatly showed us how important our project is and how we can actually help improve people’s lives.
In collaboration with Polytech Marseille, we were given the opportunity to attend the 22nd biotechnology forum. This yearly forum enables attendees to exchange with experts on the latest biotechnology advances, as it brings students and professionals together. Conferences are held to address the current challenges of biotechnology, which now play a major role in the health and environmental sectors. This year, the main topic was the potential of blue biotechnologies.
Due to very bad weather conditions in Marseille this day, the forum was held remotely. During a thirty-minute conference, we introduced the iGEM competition, synthetic biology, and our ARBO-BLOCK project to a diverse crowd (biotechnology engineering students, industrials, researchers, etc...). Through the seminar, we got a critical evaluation of our project, promoted the use of synthetic biology, shared our iGEM experience, and motivated new recruits for the 2022 iGEM competition. Altogether, the crowd's feedback helped shape the project and put it into perspective.
This gave us a chance to go deeper into discussions with the attendees. It enabled us to see through our project and to discuss bioethics and perspectives. It was an important step towards achieving a better understanding of the potential issues that we will be facing when going further with the ARBO-BLOCK project.
All persons appearing on this image (and not belonging to the iGEM 2021 team) have signed an Image rights Form
The Fête De la Science or science festival is a national event that promotes scientific awareness and, in a festive setting, exchanges between science and society! It was created 30 years ago by the French ministry of higher education, research, and innovation. The festival offers a meeting point between the general public and the actors of science. It offers massive opportunities through experiments, debate, and exchanges, for the public to gain new knowledge and to form opinions about the issues facing our society.
Fabian and Yasmine were there for the first day. They started the day with an interview by a communication student. Then, they received, on the stand, the visit of the delegation of the city of Marseille, which supports our project. The rest of the day was punctuated by animations for the children, where we delivered our ideas through two interactive activities which were a great success. Firstly, we used the mystery box, which had been a great success at the event in La Ciotat. We've also set up a banana DNA extraction experiment.
The invitation to answer our questionnaire/survey was presented through the distribution of our flyers on the stand. The goodies were for the first time present and made many happy. This event was the opportunity to present our project to the public of Marseille. The FDS was the perfect place to meet parents, children, teachers, and researchers. The festival was an enriching experience; children, as well as their parents, were really interested in our project. It was an amazing opportunity, full of emotions and pleasant encounters.
All persons appearing on this image (and not belonging to the iGEM 2021 team) have signed an Image rights Form
