Team:Athens/Communication
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Science Communication & Education
Overview
A crucial sub-goal of our team’s members was the education of the general public on matters regarding the world of SynBio. Through the withdrawal of many COVID restrictions but also “traditional” virtual means, our team managed to have a variety of fruitful interactions with many target audiences this year. We wanted the organized events and activities to be tailored around their educational level and general interests of the audience. So our idea for planning the different events along the year was to approach three separate target audiences and present them with concepts which we were certain that they would appreciate. This way we hoped to spark some interest in the audience and initiate constructive discussions. We believe that these interactions were beneficial for everyone, because the participants were encouraged to be actively informed about and even be involved in synthetic biologic topics as well as our better understanding of the way different target audiences view SynBio and it’s applications.
We are very excited to share our science communication and education activities below!
Target audience 1: higher education
The audience that we first started approaching was university students and people involved in higher education. University students are characterized by a certain level of maturity as to how they perceive the world and due to their more specific educational knowledge we could present them with more in depth concepts about synbio. Moreover, they are a social group that all of our team members were part of so we could more easily relate to. The interaction started with a small presentation about iGEM and the basics of the scientific field of synbio. These presentations were held virtually with the help of academic professors during their lectures. We were able to talk with Biology students from the National Kapodistrian University of Athens, Chemical Engineering students from the National Technical University of Athens and Biotechnology students from the Agricultural University of Athens. Additionally we were happy to collaborate with the academic organizations Hellenic Medical Students' International Committee (HelMSIC) and Scientific Congress of Hellenic Medical Students (SCHMS) and present at their conferences, which had an audience of Greek medical students from all Greek universities. The contents of these presentations were vastly similar and short but yet enough to communicate what iGEM is and how the field of synthetic biology operates.
Due to the positive feedback of these presentations and the requests for a more thorough discussion on the topics regarding synthetic biology, we organized a larger virtual event that aimed to dive deeper into the concepts of synthetic biology and some of its applications as well as answer some of the main questions people had. The presentation was longer, more technical explaining and linking together concepts like logic design (e.g. AND, OR gates) and genetic circuits (promoter, rbs, etc). We also presented past iGEM projects (including iGEM projects of team Athens 2019, 2020, 2021) as applications of synbio and had interesting discussions on other capabilities of synthetic biology too.
After this event, an immediate request was apparent; students had grasped the basic knowledge needed and wanted to move on to a more hands-on experience. So we teamed up with the educational volunteer team TEDx NTUA and reserved a spot in their workshop panels where we organized our first non-virtual event of the year named “iGEM Athens: Benchling tutorial”. As the title says, we organized an interactive workshop where participants would learn the basics of designing their own genetic circuit and plasmid structure with the use of the software Benchling. To do this we created a step by step guide that was executed in real time along with the participants. The tutorial genetic circuit used was based on a high school iGEM team’s project that aimed to combat microplastics (Team: ASTWS-China[link]). The tutorial was a success and the audience was encouraged to come up with their own solutions about different problems and design novel genetic circuits. And who knows, some of these people might be part of the new iGEM Athens team too!
We were very excited about the results and the impact our events had to the university students. Furthermore, we wanted everyone to have the chance to repeat our tutorial at any time. So we constructed a well rounded PDF, written in Greek, that contained a step by step tutorial on how to use Benchling to construct the plasmid presented at the workshop. We opted to author the guide in Greek, as a large portion of our audience is not familiar with the technical terms related to SynBio in English and wanted to maximize accessibility. We hope this way the technical "jargon" would be easier for our target audience. The PDF version of the tutorial can be found here.
Target audience 2: High School students
The next group of people we targeted was school students whose interaction with science subjects at school may shape their future passions, academic and social goals. We wanted to be part of this process by introducing them to the fascinating abilities of biology, especially in tandem with engineering, but also partake in mature conversations about bioethics and biosafety, two critical topics encompassing SynBio.
Eagerly awaiting the new school year to start, which was accompanied with in-person classes, something that had not been done for almost six months. So, in September we came in contact with the 2nd Experimental High School of Athens, in order to facilitate conversation with students from the life sciences' direction. However, we wanted to retain the hands-on approach of communicating science topics so, in addition to an introductory presentation about the principles of engineering and biology, we created a simple protocol of DNA extraction from fruits. This was such a beneficial addition to the organized event, because it helped students to visualize and better understand the concepts we dicuss. The event ended with a discussion regarding the ethical responsibilities of a synthetic biology scientist with a great emphasis in terminology derived from the human practises part of the iGEM competition.
Through our conversation with the students, we came to the conclusion that the science community should make greater efforts to simplify and spread their acquired knowledge to the general public so as to prevent misconceptions and fear of the applications of science. This was a great inspiration for our goals regarding the third target audience and ended up providing two topics about synbio misconceptions and ethics surrounding the field. In addition, the students show great interest in the concept of iGEM competition and as the school participates in many student science competitions, we saw a spark that could possibly translate to the first Public High School iGEM Team in Greece for the competition of 2022! We promised to keep in touch and help the students and teachers who are interested in becoming involved with the competition.
In the same spirit as the higher education events, we wanted to create something that would be accessible and would keep inspiring young students to pursue a scientific career. Seeing how students were active participants in the event due to their interaction with the DNA extraction protocol, we created an educative protocol for DNA extraction from kiwis, written in Greek. This short handbook was targeted to high school biology teachers who wanted to have a more fruitful (pun intended) interaction with the students. It also contains descriptions of the phenomena involved in every step of the protocol, as well as a FAQ at the end. The pdf version of the handbook can be found here.
Target Audience 3: general public
The much broader target audience, the general public gave us the chance to try more diverse science communication activities. The goal was simple; induce the interest in synthetic biology to as many people as possible and provide them with content about simplified concepts and applications of synbio so as to encourage more interaction with the field. To achieve this, we created a mini blog-series which was written with the purpose of exploring different topics surrounding synthetic biology. After a lot of research we settled on four blog ideas that we believe were most intriguing for our targeted audience. These were:
- The future of the synbio industry
- How synbio actively makes the world a better place
- Ethics and biosafety surrounding synbio
- What is iGEM and its connection with the greek universities
Each blog-post is a ~5 min read and tries to tackle the corresponding topic in an approachable way, but backed up by the literature. The reader was also provided with further readings to broaden their understanding on the topic. In order to reach a wider audience, the blogs were posted in our Medium page, an open platform where readers find writings on any topic and where writers can share and be found easily.
Two shorter but still impactful activities were organized for educational reasons. A short 20 minute podcast that talked about vaccines and the hesitation surrounding the COVID vaccines which aimed to demystify their use and abilities (the original post can be found in our Instagram page). And lastly, inspired by the direct connection of our project AdAPTED and the highly relatable PCR technique, we created a short step-by-step graphical guide of the procedure used for millions of patients around the world (this post can also be found in our Instagram page).
Two additional ways our team managed to communicate with the general public and are worth pointing out are:
- The inclusion of our team’s project description in an OMIC-Engine article, a community page by the National Infrastructure for Synthetic Biology.
- The decision to make the iGEM Meet Up : Greek edition an open to the public event, gave the ability to many people to tune in to interesting talks from many professionals in synthetic biology.
Impact
The year-round collective effort of our team, through the 8 educational events and 9 pieces of creative content, managed to bring us close with a variety of people. Specifically the total number of people we interacted with was:
These stats really amazed us, but we hope that even more people will engage with the world of synthetic biology through the many tutorials and blog posts we left behind. Each event was impactful for our team members too, due to the constructive discussions with each audience that bore new ideas as to how to approach the next educational content, but also how to present our own iGEM work in a more well-thought way. All in all, the goal to educate the public on topics regarding synbio was a success !