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Triangle Math and Science Academy Teaching
Sharing about the growing world of synthetic biology and educating those around us has always been a priority to our outreach team. Additionally, we are passionate about serving our community and wanted to find a way to integrate both of these goals into one project.To do so, we connected with a local high school to give a presentation about synthetic biology to their AP Biology class.This hour-long presentation consisted of a refresher of key biology topics, an introduction to laboratory techniques, and several interactive activities that allowed the students to collaborate with one another to solve synthetic biology related problems using the information they had just learned.We also introduced them to iGEM and shared about our own project, with the hope of inspiring some of the students to pursue research in similar fields or even participate in iGEM down the line.This experience was both fun and fulfilling, and we are already planning on giving similar presentations to other local schools in the future.
Angels Among Us 5K
On October 2nd, a portion of our team joined the Angels Among Us 5k hosted by the Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center.The Angels Among Us 5k seeks to raise awareness and funding for the patients currently afflicted with brain cancer as well as highlight the stories of survivors.In attending this event, team members were able to directly interact with the local community of brain cancer survivors.One such survivor, Tom O’Donnell, spoke with us about how his fears of surgically induced complications lead him to run his first marathon. Now at marathon number twenty eight, Tom emphasized the importance of the close relationships that he formed with his healthcare providers throughout his treatment process.This sentiment about the significance of the relationships developed between patients and their physicians was echoed by the other survivors we spoke with.Participating in this event and being able to interact with cancer patients and survivors reminded our team of the human aspect of our project and allowed us to think more thoughtfully about the applications and impact of our work.
Educational Material Preparation
We collaborated with the Duke Kunshan iGEM team to host the Duke x DKU Mini Jamboree to give teams an opportunity to present their work and learn about synthetic biology.As part of our mini jamboree, all teams were invited to work together to create SYN BIO, an educational outreach booklet featuring key six synthetic biology terms: Safety, Tyrosine, Nucleic Acid, Biomanufacturing, in-vivo gene editing, and origin of replication.Our SYN BIO educational outreach booklets were shared on social media (Twitter and Instagram) to reach the general public and for participating teams to distribute to their local communities.