Team:Baltimore BioCrew/Collaborations
Collaborations
Collaboration with Johns Hopkins iGEM team
We collaborated with the Johns Hopkins iGEM team to develop a survey. We sought to analyze the market for probiotics and develop a marketing plan for distributing our product, JoyBiotic. We also wanted to understand how mental health has been affected by the pandemic and various other factors. The survey included two major sections: general mental health questions and a market analysis. The latter had questions surrounding consumer preferences and product development with 3 main focus areas: product presentation, product advertising, and product pricing.
The survey was developed with input from Dr. Justice Walker, a synthetic biology researcher and an expert on survey design. We used his recommendations to determine how to structure the survey, how to retain participants’ attention, and how to maximize useful results. With Dr. Walker’s instruction, we were able to construct a survey that incorporated iterative processes of draft revisions, while including categorical and free response data to enhance participant response reliability.
The survey was tested by focus groups within our own team for feedback, and it was edited for improved question clarity and structure. It was then distributed to other iGEM teams via the official Slack channel, with our final goal being to analyze the implications of the current state of mental health and our product on iGEM participants in order to apply it to a larger audience. This helped shape our viewpoints and perspectives towards mental health and how JoyBiotic can best be incorporated within Baltimore communities.
Collaboration with MSP-Maastricht iGEM team
For this collaboration, our team submitted an article overviewing our project to a peer-reviewed scientific journalcompiled by the MSP Maastricht iGEM team. It included details on background information, methodology, data and results, and implications of the results, and it was updated with results as we progressed through the stages of our project. The journal also allows for peer-reviews to enable modifications of the drafts to shape our research design and approach, and similarly, the opportunity to revise other journals submitted by other iGEM teams.
Collaboration with William and Mary iGEM team
We attended and presented at the MidAtlantic meetup organized by the William and Mary team and were able to get feedback on our project and make comments on other teams' projects.