Team:FCB-UANL/Human Practices
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Stakeholders - first contact We are well aware of the importance of contacting people directly or indirectly affected by the problem and learning from them.This year we decided to contact stakeholders from different backgrounds to get a complete perspective of the impact, utility and nature of both the problem and our proposed solution.
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Feasibility analysis: reshaping the project Once we had the chance to talk to different stakeholders, we decided to brainstorm into what aspects of the project we could adjust, and how we could make the most out of the information gathered during our meetings. We came up with some ideas and evaluated their feasibility to be implemented to improve our project.
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First reflexions After some digging, we started working in the new things about the project, and defined which experts we needed to contact to improve those ideas and activities.
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Collaborations with teams and contact with experts Reshaping a project is not an easy task, but with the help of experts and different iGEM teams we were able to implement our stakeholders’ opinions and even go beyond by performing different activities with teams all around the world
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Stakeholders - second contact Once we felt ready, we decided to go back to our stakeholders and talk about the changes we made, as well as about our new proposals. This experience further helped to reassure that the project’s new orientation was on the right track since stakeholders started feeling more and more engaged with the project. However, there were some stakeholders with whom we had contact through all the season.
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Contact with communities As our constant communication with stakeholders continued to take place, we decided to reach out to a group of people who had not been contacted before: communities that had been affected by fires. Clearly, this was a hard task, but we proceeded with the utmost caution and followed all the advice given during the safety & security workshop given by iGEM ambassadors.
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Reflections and evolution analysis Once we gathered all the opinions and insights, we analyzed how our project evolved from last year and answered the initial questions we had.
GETTING TO KNOW THE PROBLEM
MULTI-CENTERED APPROACH
INTEGRATED HUMAN PRACTICES
AFFECTED COMMUNITIES
CUSTOMERS AND USERS
REGULATORY AUTHORITIES
EXPERTS
FEEDBACK AND REFLECTIONS
CONTINUOUS VALIDATION
SELF EDUCATION
ENVIRONMENTAL LAW
VALUES AND RISKS
REFERENCES
GETTING TO KNOW THE PROBLEM
Fire incidents represent a latent danger
to human
lives and
the
environment, and they cause humongous economic losses due to deficient control
strategies
and
the tools
consumed during the event. Besides, they are not restricted to a specific geographic
region;
affected
areas
can be seen both at international and local levels. Proof of this is Mexico's
northern
region,
which
holds the
two most important mountain systems in the country: the Sierra Madre Oriental and
the Sierra
Madre
Occidental
(1). Just last year, more than 5,000 fire incidents were reported by the local
firefighters
department
only in
the Mexican state of Nuevo León (2). Therefore, hundreds of species of the fourth
most
megadiverse
country
in the
world (3), including endemic species, are exposed to the risks of
unnatural
patterns of destructive and frequent fires.
Even though our main concerns are forest wildfires, we cannot forget the millions of people who live around these ecosystems, in addition to the companies, private lands, and other infrastructure that have established near areas prone to wildfires. In addition to that, there is a concerning lack of efficient tools to combat fires, which makes them a bigger problem, since it is not uncommon to lose control of these incidents and have the surrounding cities affected. This is the reason why, after talking with stakeholders and learning more about fire incidents, we decided to broaden our approach and also include peri-urban fires, without neglecting our forestal concerns. In the following graph, we show the most frequent types of fire incidents in our region (1).
Even though our main concerns are forest wildfires, we cannot forget the millions of people who live around these ecosystems, in addition to the companies, private lands, and other infrastructure that have established near areas prone to wildfires. In addition to that, there is a concerning lack of efficient tools to combat fires, which makes them a bigger problem, since it is not uncommon to lose control of these incidents and have the surrounding cities affected. This is the reason why, after talking with stakeholders and learning more about fire incidents, we decided to broaden our approach and also include peri-urban fires, without neglecting our forestal concerns. In the following graph, we show the most frequent types of fire incidents in our region (1).
MULTI-CENTERED APPROACH
To properly lay the foundations of our project, it is necessary to thoroughly analyze each one of the perspectives to determine which fits best with our design. A social and ecological problem, such as the one we are trying to solve, is a complex phenomenon composed of different factors. We believe it is necessary to incorporate them all to design a concrete, achievable solution, thus, we decided to use a multi-centered approach, which would allow us to build a solution by taking into consideration all the interconnected necessities and not only segregated factors.
Once we defined the previous point and analyzed the feedback given last year, we started planning the information we wanted to acquire and how we could obtain it, along with an action plan on what to do depending on this year’s feedback. Our stakeholders' contributions have played an essential role to fulfill this goal, by helping us to improve it and propose new activities and components to better match the needs and concerns we identified along the process.
INTEGRATED HUMAN PRACTICES
In order to make our project reflexive, responsible and responsive, and based on what we learned during the Human Practices Sessions on last year’s Giant Jamboree, we designed a plan to take as much information as possible from all our stakeholders to change or adapt our project. First, we elaborated a series of questions which would help us center ourselves on the information we wanted to obtain and how we would manage that newly acquired knowledge for improving our project. Thus, we made two main questions to help us defining our stakeholders:
[1] What should we be aware of while working on my project?
[2] Should we adapt, or change, or stop anything about our design following this exercise?
Once taking into consideration these initial questions, we then identified our main stakeholders, and, by using the information we already had and the feedback they gave us, we answered the following questions:
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What types of actors or organizations may speak out about our design?
- What may be their visions/arguments/opinions?
- What values do they have or expect us to represent?
- What feelings might they have?
Besides the information we wanted to obtain, due to the nature of our research we know the topic can be sensitive to some people. During this iGEM season we attended the iGEM values and risks workshop, where we learned how to contact people and what kind of considerations to take into account while talking with them. Additionally, we used the letter of consent proposed by team FCB-UANL 2020 (4) to establish the purposes of the contact and to make our stakeholders aware of the usage of the information shared with us. In each stakeholder, you can see their OVFA by clicking on the button on the right side.
AFFECTED COMMUNITIES: GETTING TO KNOW THE NECESSITIES
Our first contact was with people responsible for administering public lands, also known as “ejidos”. These are big pieces of land usually located at the outskirts of cities and are mostly used to produce crops. Their size and surroundings make them prone to fire disasters. As a strategy to get in contact with them, we made an official application to a government department to gain access to the necessary information. The application was generated with the help of a legal counselor, and it was submitted to two different departments, the Agrarian Attorneys Office and the Agrarian Registry; you can see the document by clicking here. Unfortunately, the answer from both departments was that they could not grant access to that type of information since all contact and procedures are made in-person. Due to their location and the current sanitary situation, it was far beyond our possibilities to meet in person. Consequently, we decided to embrace a new plan. Since we live in a big city, there are a lot of ranches with cattle. Therefore, we contacted several of them and successfully got a response. In addition, we also tried to contact groups concerned about the preservation of our ecosystems. In this case, we used this contact to improve our project and to develop some education and public engagement activities.
Eng. Arnulfo de la Garza
He is the manager of the “San Juan” ranch located on Pesquería (Nuevo Leon), and he is primarily focused on selling and maintaining cattle. We contacted him due to his experience dealing with combat and prevention of fires, and we discussed the impact it can have in their work and techniques they have learnt to prevent it.
Mexico Scouts, Group 9
Scouts groups are part of an association whose objective is to teach important values to young people, such as respect and responsibility with nature, as well as encourage skills such as leadership, responsibility, and critical thinking in their members. We contacted them because we are sure their values match ours, and their perspective could give us interesting feedback regarding the preservation efforts made in our ecosystems. We made an educational activity (for more details go to our communication section ) and heard their opinions (reported in our education section) through some questions made to the assistants.
Brayan Cerón
He is a Forest Engineering student from the Instituto Tecnológico de México. We contacted him because of his knowledge both studying and working with fire prevention plans; he is actually working on a public land managing fire. We contacted him thanks to the SCIENCOPIC CONCYTEP iGEM Design League team.
CUSTOMERS AND USERS: GETTING TO KNOW THE MARKET
The opinions and feedback from potential users and customers are very important whenever it is planned to launch a new product on the market. Thus, besides our market analysis carried out, we contacted several current foam users -or potential users- to acquire information to make a well established plan for upscaling our project. Something we noticed throughout this time were the difficulties to contact foam producer companies, since some of them actually told us they did not have interest in Mexico as a potential customer; this gave us some insight regarding how it is not easy to acquire foams for Mexican firefighters.
Eng. Marco Vergara
He has known our project and given us feedback since last year, and we decided to follow up his contact due to his vast experience working with local fire departments and firefighters preparation. Also, he and his team Rescueteam Mx’s social and safety approaches match perfectly our project values and interests, since they develop activities regarding firefighters rescue and fire prevention to raise awareness on the population.
AMEREX
We talked with Eng. José Luis Loaiza from AMEREX, an American company settled in Mexico recognized as a world leader in the manufacture of fire control equipment. Since last year, they have been following our project progress and giving us feedback regarding the technical requirements our foam has to have to be offered in the market. Since we have no foam producers in our country, AMEREX has been of vital importance for us as a lead distributor of these tools. Just like the case of Eng. Marco Vergara, AMEREX is another stakeholder with whom we recontacted from last year, because of their wide expertise,and it is the closest organization to foam producers for our country.
BIOEX
BIOEX is a firefighting foam concentrates manufacturer company. For us, BIOEX insights are very important because, due to the lack of foam producers in Mexico, we had a lot of difficulties contacting foreign companies. They are a leading company on foams production, along with the fact that one of their goals is to produce eco-friendly foams, perfectly matches the type of company we want for giving us their opinion about our project. We talked with Oliver Houlbert, BIOEX Managing Director.
REGULATORY AUTHORITIES
As a project intending to solve a local problem, we have learned the importance of analyze how our project could be actually implemented, and one of the first steps is to know the proper regulations to take into account for two main reasons: to ensure our product is effective, and to accomplish all the requirements to be sold in the market.
UL (Underwriters Laboratories)
UL defines itself as a global safety science leader, their role is primarily to help companies to demonstrate safety, enhance sustainability, strengthen security, deliver quality, manage risk and achieve regulatory compliance (5). We got to know them due to AMEREX and Eng. Marco Vergara (stakeholders) advice. Our first approach was with with Claudia Sama, Latin America regional manager, and María Lafano, international standards manager. After that, due to the interest they had in our project, we continued having regular meetings throughout the season.
MSc Aida Juarez Cruz
Former member of SEMARNAT (Environment and Natural Resources Secretary), the office of the federal executive power in charge of guaranteeing sustainable development and environmental balance.
EXPERTS
Regarding the technical part of the project, it is very important for us to be sure every aspect was considered to minimize the risk of getting unfavorable experimental results. That is the reason we reached out to many experts from different areas to better define all the aspects that had to be taken into account and listen to their valuable opinions from their expertise areas. From synthetic biology topics to fire safety and ecology, we heard a lot of interesting opinions shown below.
Dr Citlali Cortes Montaño
She is a Mexican ecologist with a master in forestry and a PhD in forest Science. Right now, she is working with planning and implementing projects regarding forests and biodiversity. We decided to contact her because of her expertise regarding fire ecology and her previous work in Mexican forests.
MSc Ediner Fuentes
He is our advisor in biosafety and biosecurity activities, as well as in Mexican and Latin American regulation regarding synthetic biology and biotechnology. He has a Master degree in Environmental Microbiology and is the Co-Founder of “The Bridge Biofoundry" a consortium of Latinamerican laboratories of innovation in biotechnology focused on sustainable manufacturing.
PhD Sarah Yannarell
She is a PhDc in Microbiology and Immunology at the University of North Carolina. We contacted her because she has worked with B. subtlis and sporulation-related processes; as they are very complex regulatory networks, it is very important for us to know the opinion of an expert on this field.
LBG Mario Peña Hernández
He is a genomic biotechnologist from our university, and is currently studying his PhD at Yale; Mario participated in iGEM in 2013, on the UANL high school team. We decided to contact him to obtain feedback on our killswitch design, because he is one of the few people that have worked with CRISPR at our university, in addition to their knowledge of the competition and the criteria we have to accomplish.
MSc Carolina Montoya Vallejo
She is a biological engineer at Universidad de Antioquia. She has structured multiple models of kinetic growth in bioreactors, and has expertise in biotechnology. We contacted her while we were still deciding which models were the best for our project.
BSc Eduardo Alejandro Castillo Aguilar
He is a mathematician who graduated from our university last year. We contacted him because of his creativity, dedication and knowledge of several programming languages, and his experience elaborating math models. We had continuous contact throughout the year with the objective of improving our model; also, he answered all the questions we had during the development of the project.
FEEDBACK IMPORTANCE AND REFLECTIONS
After receiving all the feedback and analyzing the OVFA from our stakeholders, we re-analyzed the initial questions and gave them answers, noticing and understanding how our project changed. For this purpose, we summarized the work done by FCB-UANL team last year and how the project evolved for this 2021.
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- What were we aware of while working on SYNBIOFOAM?
- In order to achieve an optimal functioning of the foam when the firefighters (i.e. users) use it, we had to be sure we clearly indicated the correct concentration to apply the formulation as well as the range of temperatures at which the foam worked. to better shape our proposed implementation and have the optimal version of the product for the market. Something our stakeholders were afraid of was the nature of our foam, because of the little research on using biomolecules as surfactants for this application; hence, we reached out to the Underwriters' Laboratories team and they shared this view; since they told us that our project is a totally new concept and new challenges may arise from it. However, facing new challenges represents for us an opportunity to conduct more detailed investigation regarding different aspects of the foam such as its physicochemical characterization, novel design on the industrial production system GMO permissions and regulations to follow. Last but not least, we also learned how little people know about the ecosystem and its importance, so we increased our efforts in this matter through our education and communication activities.
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- What did we adapt, change, or stop about our project?
- Regarding the molecular part, a CRISPR/Cas9 killswitch system, which will be used to prevent the formation and release of GMO spores, was designed based on the development of a new and more complete risk assessment. The sporulation issue was also considered on our math model since several models were built to complement each other, as suggested by MSc Carolina Montoya Vallejo. With respect to the final product, we decided to recommend the usage of the foam as a complementary contention method for the initial market entry, considering the economic difficulties our potential customers may have. Also, thinking of the cost analysis, and with the aim of reducing our foam price, we came up with the implementation of other industries’ waste as our raw material for the industrial production process (further explanation is provided in our math model section). Finally, to strengthen the added value of our product, and concerned by the worry of endangering human lives through firefighting, we decided to develop the design of an autonomous drone with sensors to locate and combat fires.
After analyzing the general evolution of SYNBIOFOAM, we here compile the main points of our stakeholder’s impact on the project.
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- What types of actors or organizations we talked with?
- We divided our stakeholders into four main groups: [1] affected communities, which involved people managing lands in risk to be affected by a fire incident, or making prevention and ecosystem preservation efforts; [2] customers and potential users to get to know our market necessities; [3] regulatory authorities to consider the biosafety, biosecurity and policy aspects of our product; and [4] experts from different fields such as synthetic biology, math modeling, fire ecology, B. subtilis, and even policy, education, and pedagogy to incorporate their insight.
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- What were their visions/arguments/opinions?
- In general, we received positive opinions, and most of the people we spoke to expressed their openness to working with GMOs or GMO-derived products. Besides getting to know their stand on the matter, we received highly valuable feedback to improve everything we could from our project. To incorporate their perspectives, we elaborated a more complete risk assessment, proposed an autonomous drone as the proposed implementation method, worked on our business model, and made improvements in our science communication activities.
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- What values did they consider important?
- The values that prevailed as the most important among our stakeholders were listening, empathy, respect, responsibility, excellence, honesty, perseverance, critical thinking, creativity, and teamwork. Thus, we decided to consider them when building and performing our communication activities to reflect them.
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- What feelings did they have?
- Curiosity, excitement, and interest. However, many stakeholders also expressed their concern and recommended to keep researching.
CONTINUOUS VALIDATION FROM OUR STAKEHOLDERS
From all the people we talked to, there were three main stakeholders that helped us throughout the year; they got to know our project from the beginning of the season and we had continuous feedback on how to improve our project, who are the following:
Eng. Marco Vergara greatly helped us to know the real needs of the market. It was very helpful for us to know that, unfortunately, the environmental factor is not decisive when it comes to choosing the best foam. Hence, we decided to add some other features to make our product both attractive and competitive for the potential customers, where our main outcome was the design of the autonomous drone. For this matter, he also gave us some insight regarding the main points we had to take into account to apply the foam, and regarding the temperature and other conditions in the fire, a further explanation is provided in our proposed implementation section.
We also recontacted one of our last year’s main stakeholders, AMEREX, the main firefighting foams distributor in Mexico, so they have seen our project’s evolution from the very beginning.Their feedback has significantly helped us shape our project, besides the fact that they offered us their laboratories to make the fire tests required and gave us some information regarding the physicochemical characterization we need to do previous to those tests; consequently, we decided how to assemble the pertinent protocols for our proof of concept and engineering success. In addition, their feedback led us to search for regulatory authorities regarding foams certifications.
In this way, we contacted Underwriters Laboratories, the international regulatory organism for firefighting foams, because of their important role certificating and regulating firefighting foams worldwide; we started participating on webinars they offered in order to learn more about fire safety, and to establish contact. On our first approach, we talked about our project and they showed a lot of interest, so they gave us insight on many areas of the project, such as safety and security (further explained in our safety section), education (their role is explained in our communication section), and also contacting other stakeholders.
They invited us to their event "Day of the firefighter in Mexico" where the importance of firefighters, their activities and the firefighting strategies they execute were discussed, and we also presented our project to experts in the fire combat area. This gave us the opportunity to receive feedback from Juan Arellano, founder of the Celaya Emergency Training School, Héctor Elorriaga, commander of firefighters in Mexico, and Wilber Fletcher, member of Underwriters Laboratories. Some of the questions and suggestions received helped us shape our entrepreneurship, safety and proposed implementation areas. Both experts and viewers showed interest in our sustainable product, as a possible alternative in the market.
SELF EDUCATION
One of the most important things we noticed with our meetings with stakeholders and experts was how much we had to learn, so we got involved in some webinars and asked our stakeholders for different resources such as documents, books, and other information sources to learn more about all the areas of the project. We even developed an educational activity for our younger team members, which is further explained in our communication section. Specifically, for our human practices activities there were two main workshops that helped us shape our approach.
SEMINAR ON ENVIRONMENTAL LAW IN MEXICO
We attended this course organized by Biologist Gloria Edith Pérez López, who has an extensive knowledge of environmental rights and management supported by the Center for Legal and Environmental Studies, A.C. (CEJA) and the University of Chile. During this conference, we were introduced to the current environmental legislation in Mexico, as well as private and state institutions and international agreements involved. We also learned about the challenges that come ahead for Mexico in the future, and how we can take a step forward in order to solve them. Even though we did not propose a law improvement, understanding the most important things that have to be taken into consideration for the regulation of our product helped us improve the plan for the characterization tests and the risk assessment.
VALUES AND RISKS WORKSHOP: ENGINEERING OUR COLLECTIVE FUTURE
We attended this workshop organized by iGEM ambassadors that focused on exploring and highlighting information such as ethical dilemmas and projects safety and responsibility that are essential for our project development. With the help of interactive dialogue and brainstorming, we learned about important concepts which we integrated into our general process to contact stakeholders. After attending this course, we developed a plan on how to contact affected communities to talk about fire incidents considering it is a delicate subject, we also made sure to notify all our stakeholders how we were going to manage the information they gave us. This was the main reason why we decided on contact potential affected communities instead of already affected ones, because of the sensibility of the topic due to the recent wildfires that have affected them.
REFERENCES
(1) López de Llergo, R. (2003). Principales rasgos geográficos de la República Mexicana. Investigaciones geográficas, 50, 26-41. Bomberos de Nuevo León. (2020). Estadísticas. https://bit.ly/3ixfMSg
(2) Jiménez Sierra, C.L., Sosa Ramírez, J., Cortés-Calva, P., Breceda Solís C.A., Íñiguez Dávalos, L.I. & Ortega-Rubio, A. (2014). México país megadiverso y la relevancia de las áreas naturales protegidas. Investigación y Ciencia, 22(60), 16-22.
(3) FCB-UANL. (2020). Synbiofoam: a synthetic alternative to fluorosurfactants. https://bit.ly/3mlaf1W
(4) Underwriters Laboratories. (2021). https://bit.ly/3abt5mM
Eng. Arnulfo de la
Garza
Opinions: Although fire incidents are an imminent danger for
everyone
working in
public lands and
surrounding those
areas, the combat and prevention techniques are not correctly
carried out;
the
main
technique for fire
prevention consists of leaving wide extensions of loose soil with no
grass
surrounding the land sought to
protect, which represents a “loss” of extensions of land, since
neither
production
nor economic benefit
could be obtained from them. In addition, public land managers
rarely get
help
from
the authorities or
fire
department in both preventing and combating fires, unless the fire’s
intensity
is
high. They often combat
fires by their own means, using water.
Values: Listening (in both directions: to communicate and to learn from others), empathy (we have to try to understand why people and organisations act like they do, even if we think it is not the best), and respect (to each other's opinions and arguments).
Feelings: Eagerness to keep track of the project. In his own words “he had used firefighting foams before, but they does not seem to be effective at all”, however, he said he would like to try new alternatives. He was very worried about current methods since he wanted to protect his workers as much as he could, and he expressed the need to have authorities involved in teach public land managers how to prevent and combat fires.
Actions: Learn more about the foams that have been used in Mexico and why they were so inefficient
Values: Listening (in both directions: to communicate and to learn from others), empathy (we have to try to understand why people and organisations act like they do, even if we think it is not the best), and respect (to each other's opinions and arguments).
Feelings: Eagerness to keep track of the project. In his own words “he had used firefighting foams before, but they does not seem to be effective at all”, however, he said he would like to try new alternatives. He was very worried about current methods since he wanted to protect his workers as much as he could, and he expressed the need to have authorities involved in teach public land managers how to prevent and combat fires.
Actions: Learn more about the foams that have been used in Mexico and why they were so inefficient
Mexico Scouts, Group
9
Opinions: Humans play a major role in damaging the environment.
Hence,
efforts
to
teach the importance of
taking care of our ecosystems and raise awareness of fire incidents
and
their
consequences, and how to
prevent them is something they would like people to know better.
They told
us it
is
very interesting how
using synbio we can solve many problems, and our solution could be
well
received.
Values: Responsibility, respect and environmental awareness. For them it is very important to be open when presenting our project, to answer questions and hear people’s opinions and concerns.
Feelings: They showed curiosity in learning more about the environment around our region, and were very interested in how we are going to produce the foam without using frogs. Some comments heard during our activity with them were “your project is very interesting” “it seems so cool and crazy”. In general, we received good opinions.
Actions: We developed more educational activities to raise awareness about the importance of ecosystems and some actions to prevent fire incidents.
Values: Responsibility, respect and environmental awareness. For them it is very important to be open when presenting our project, to answer questions and hear people’s opinions and concerns.
Feelings: They showed curiosity in learning more about the environment around our region, and were very interested in how we are going to produce the foam without using frogs. Some comments heard during our activity with them were “your project is very interesting” “it seems so cool and crazy”. In general, we received good opinions.
Actions: We developed more educational activities to raise awareness about the importance of ecosystems and some actions to prevent fire incidents.
Brayan Cerón
Opinions: Even though fire incidents are mainly caused because of
anthropogenic
activities, many people
are
not interested in taking care of the ecosystem, hence, it could be
helpful
to
focus
some of our
educational
activities for people working in public lands, talking about how to
obtain
information for fire prevention
and combat. He strongly recommended us to learn more about fires to
better
localize
in what type of lands
our foam could be used. He also told us that, contrary to general
perspective,
using
foams is cheaper than
using water to combat fires due to the costs of extracting and
transporting
it.
Additionally, foams are
more
effective in terms of people needed to combat a fire incident and
time it
takes
to
extinguish
fire.
Values: He expressed his commitment with preserving the environment and raising awareness about the threats our ecosystems are facing nowadays. Excellence is an important value for him, since it is very important to do your best when working with a social and environmental problem as big as the one we are trying to solve.
Feelings: He expressed his concern about people's disinterest on environmental topics and the lack of accessibility to fire combat tools. In addition, he shared with us the feelings of the population regarding the usage of GMOs and their products; “the most important thing for us as workers of public lands is to extinguish the fire, it does not matter a lot the composition of the product as long as it is effective”.
Actions:We started learning more about fires and the temperatures these incidents can reach, as well as incorporate some insight regarding the cost and difficulties of using foams to make the general plan of our proposed implementation section. Thanks to Brayan’s advice we started thinking on designing a new application method.
Values: He expressed his commitment with preserving the environment and raising awareness about the threats our ecosystems are facing nowadays. Excellence is an important value for him, since it is very important to do your best when working with a social and environmental problem as big as the one we are trying to solve.
Feelings: He expressed his concern about people's disinterest on environmental topics and the lack of accessibility to fire combat tools. In addition, he shared with us the feelings of the population regarding the usage of GMOs and their products; “the most important thing for us as workers of public lands is to extinguish the fire, it does not matter a lot the composition of the product as long as it is effective”.
Actions:We started learning more about fires and the temperatures these incidents can reach, as well as incorporate some insight regarding the cost and difficulties of using foams to make the general plan of our proposed implementation section. Thanks to Brayan’s advice we started thinking on designing a new application method.
Eng. Marco Vergara
Opinions:He told us the most important features of a foam is to be
affordable
and
practical, since it is
somewhat complicated to enter the market having cheaper
alternatives;
unfortunately,
even when people are
concerned about the ecological impact, it is not easy to afford an
ecological
but
more expensive foam.
Regarding the properties of the foam, he pointed out that even with
the best
foam it
is very important to
know how to dose it, the correct adjustment of the pump, and how to
calculate
the
product dilutions to avoid
the misuse and keep its properties.
Values: He showed excitement about having people interested in developing new alternatives to help firefighters, and also encouraged us to be perseverant with our project. On his opinion, even if the project can seem difficult, it is something very necessary in our country to have people working with new alternatives to current combat methods and making people aware of this big problem we are facing with fire incidents.
Feelings: He was a little concerned about our knowledge about fires and how even in the same fire types we can have different fuels or temperatures, so he advised us to go a little bit deeper into our fire comprehension. Nevertheless, he said it is very hopeful to see young people concerned about this problem.
Actions: We started considering the usage of raw material from agricultural waste to reduce costs when scaling up the project. He gave us some materials and information regarding firefighting foams regulations and certifications, that helped us to contact other stakeholders to improve and design our foam tests and proposed implementation section, as well as our safety proposal regarding policy.
Values: He showed excitement about having people interested in developing new alternatives to help firefighters, and also encouraged us to be perseverant with our project. On his opinion, even if the project can seem difficult, it is something very necessary in our country to have people working with new alternatives to current combat methods and making people aware of this big problem we are facing with fire incidents.
Feelings: He was a little concerned about our knowledge about fires and how even in the same fire types we can have different fuels or temperatures, so he advised us to go a little bit deeper into our fire comprehension. Nevertheless, he said it is very hopeful to see young people concerned about this problem.
Actions: We started considering the usage of raw material from agricultural waste to reduce costs when scaling up the project. He gave us some materials and information regarding firefighting foams regulations and certifications, that helped us to contact other stakeholders to improve and design our foam tests and proposed implementation section, as well as our safety proposal regarding policy.
AMEREX
Opinions:He told us the main foam buyer is the petrochemical
industry, and
it is
important to consider the
fire type and the foam concentration used in each one, as well as
the
preparation
and application
techniques. He shared with us some information about the most
relevant foam
certifications in the market,
since they consider it is something very important for
customers
Values: They told us honesty is a very important value, since some producers offer their products even when they know they will not be effective on the fire type they are intended to be used.
Feelings: He was concerned about the foams market in Mexico, since the economic and regulation factors may be a difficulty when trying to develop a new foam. Also, he was somewhat worried about the government’s trust in foams, because due to the lack of knowledge on how to use them properly, sometimes foams seem to be not as effective as they should.
Actions: Insight on how to plan the foam tests. We decided to incorporate UL to our stakeholders to receive insight about the certifications and laboratory tests required for our foam, since Eng. José Luis and Eng. Marco Vergara, another stakeholder, mentioned this organism. We decided to make further theoretical research about our foam components and how they can interact to avoid its misuse.
Values: They told us honesty is a very important value, since some producers offer their products even when they know they will not be effective on the fire type they are intended to be used.
Feelings: He was concerned about the foams market in Mexico, since the economic and regulation factors may be a difficulty when trying to develop a new foam. Also, he was somewhat worried about the government’s trust in foams, because due to the lack of knowledge on how to use them properly, sometimes foams seem to be not as effective as they should.
Actions: Insight on how to plan the foam tests. We decided to incorporate UL to our stakeholders to receive insight about the certifications and laboratory tests required for our foam, since Eng. José Luis and Eng. Marco Vergara, another stakeholder, mentioned this organism. We decided to make further theoretical research about our foam components and how they can interact to avoid its misuse.
BIOEX
Opinions: Due to their long expertise working in the firefighting
foams
market,
and
developing new products,
they recommended us to evaluate how innovative our firefighting foam
was.
From a
business point of view, it
doesn't really matter if our product is “a hundred percent
environmentally
friendly”
as it is difficult to
compete with other “green” products because of the costs. He told us
if we
can
develop an eco-friendly
product cheaper and more accessible than the ones already existing
that
could
represent a breakthrough in
the market.
Feelings: He was concerned about the foams market in Mexico, since the economic and regulation factors may be a difficulty when trying to develop a new foam. Also, he was somewhat worried about the government’s trust in foams, because due to the lack of knowledge on how to use them properly, sometimes foams seem to be not as effective as they should.
Actions: We started integrating his feelings and opinions with what other people had already told us and decided to adjust the focus and approach of the project. Also, we investigated the green foams available in the market to make a comparison to see if our product is really innovative.
Feelings: He was concerned about the foams market in Mexico, since the economic and regulation factors may be a difficulty when trying to develop a new foam. Also, he was somewhat worried about the government’s trust in foams, because due to the lack of knowledge on how to use them properly, sometimes foams seem to be not as effective as they should.
Actions: We started integrating his feelings and opinions with what other people had already told us and decided to adjust the focus and approach of the project. Also, we investigated the green foams available in the market to make a comparison to see if our product is really innovative.
UL (Underwriters
Laboratories)
Opinions: They told us firefighting foams have a lot of potential on
the
Mexican
market. Regarding the
regulations, UL does not have specific regulations for the
eco-friendly
foams;
even
though our country
generally uses international standards, they told us we may not
apply for
any of
these because of the
innovative nature of our product. However, they told us there are
some
specific
parameters we have to
consider and then, based on them, our product could enter into some
specific
certifications. Regarding our
educational activities, they encouraged us to continue with them,
especially
with
Dana la rana videos,
since they consider them a very good tool to raise awareness about
fire
incidents.
Values:Honesty and transparency when talking about statistics and fire incidents data, as well as respect for each other’s opinions and empathy.
Feelings: They showed a lot of excitement working with student research groups as us. Regardless of the lack of specific standards for our product, they told us it is not a bad thing, since our product can even be the opening of a new research line, and offered us their firefighters academia to make our fire tests.
Actions: We participated in some outreach activities to present our project to the local and international community, where we obtained very interesting feedback and opinions. In addition, during our meetings, we got to know part of the UL team, and we obtained validation for our safsafety , human practices, education, and entrepreneurship aspects of the project. Further explanations of this can be seen in the reflections section of this page, and in the wiki sections previously mentioned.
Values:Honesty and transparency when talking about statistics and fire incidents data, as well as respect for each other’s opinions and empathy.
Feelings: They showed a lot of excitement working with student research groups as us. Regardless of the lack of specific standards for our product, they told us it is not a bad thing, since our product can even be the opening of a new research line, and offered us their firefighters academia to make our fire tests.
Actions: We participated in some outreach activities to present our project to the local and international community, where we obtained very interesting feedback and opinions. In addition, during our meetings, we got to know part of the UL team, and we obtained validation for our safsafety , human practices, education, and entrepreneurship aspects of the project. Further explanations of this can be seen in the reflections section of this page, and in the wiki sections previously mentioned.
MSc Aida Juarez
Cruz
Opinions: She told us SEMARNAT is actually the best option for us to be
sure our
project
accomplishes all the proper regulations for a product of its kind. Also,
she
checked
our
previous research regarding legislation and told us we were taking into
account
the
right laws; furthermore, she guided us on how to fill in the permissions
necessary
for
the work with genetically modified organisms.
Values: Respect for the environment and the proper laws, commitment with the work to have it done as well as possible, listening to different opinions to have a broader perspective, and cooperation with regulatory organisms and research groups.
Feelings: She thinks Mexican laws regarding GMOs have many things to improve, and expressed her interest and disposition to continue helping us in order to set the foundations of the improvement of these regulations.
Actions: We completed the filling out of the Permission SEMARNAT-04-025 notice C, which is further explained in our safety section. Furthermore, we applied her opinions in our policy research.
Values: Respect for the environment and the proper laws, commitment with the work to have it done as well as possible, listening to different opinions to have a broader perspective, and cooperation with regulatory organisms and research groups.
Feelings: She thinks Mexican laws regarding GMOs have many things to improve, and expressed her interest and disposition to continue helping us in order to set the foundations of the improvement of these regulations.
Actions: We completed the filling out of the Permission SEMARNAT-04-025 notice C, which is further explained in our safety section. Furthermore, we applied her opinions in our policy research.
Dr Citlali Cortes
Montaño
Opinions: She encouraged us to reflect on where the strongest problem
relies,
since
wildfires are devastating but most of the time are part of the forest
life
cycle.
She recommended us to focus the project to peri-urban fires due to the
fact that
forest fires are handled with a more human based operation, while the
way fires
are
addressed in urban areas is poor and much more dangerous to humans, and
also
most
firefighting foams are used in that type of fire incidents.
Values: Critical thinking to reflect on the things we are working with and have a responsible and reflexive project, receptiveness to change our mind, listening to expert’s opinions, and self-assessment.
Feelings: She was afraid of the complex nature of our project and told us to focus and decide which activities we can and cannot do considering our timing. For example, she recommended us not to develop some specific activities such as a law improvement proposal or a forest management plan, since they are very complicated and long processes.
Actions: Since we had this meeting at the beginning of the iGEM season, this was the reason why we started reconsidering our projects’ approach and gathering more information on this new perspective that was presented to us. Consequently, we broadened our approach and included peri-urban fires onto the fire types our foam could extinguish. In addition, we decided not to do certain activities we had in mind (such as the law improvement proposal), and focus our efforts on the things she told us to.
Values: Critical thinking to reflect on the things we are working with and have a responsible and reflexive project, receptiveness to change our mind, listening to expert’s opinions, and self-assessment.
Feelings: She was afraid of the complex nature of our project and told us to focus and decide which activities we can and cannot do considering our timing. For example, she recommended us not to develop some specific activities such as a law improvement proposal or a forest management plan, since they are very complicated and long processes.
Actions: Since we had this meeting at the beginning of the iGEM season, this was the reason why we started reconsidering our projects’ approach and gathering more information on this new perspective that was presented to us. Consequently, we broadened our approach and included peri-urban fires onto the fire types our foam could extinguish. In addition, we decided not to do certain activities we had in mind (such as the law improvement proposal), and focus our efforts on the things she told us to.
MSc Ediner Fuentes
Opinions: We held various video calls with us during the iGEM season, in
which
we
explored how our team could comply with the whole legal process needed
to take a
GMO
into the market. He also shared with us that our project does not “fit
into” any
of
the Mexican laws, since our foam is supposed to be a product derived
from GMOs
rather than a GMO itself; nevertheless, he told us to keep studying
Mexico’s
regulations in order to find where our project could fit the most. And,
just
like
MSc Aida Juárez said, SEMARNAT would be the most fitting regulatory
organism for
our
project. Besides, as previous years, Ediner encouraged us to develop a
risk
assessment for our project and helped us review it.
Values: Responsibility to guide us during the whole iGEM season and promotion of critical thinking when identifying risks related to our project and measures to mitigate those risks.
Feelings: He is very eager to keep helping us in any project we might work on, he also liked our interest in regulation so he has invited us to different events during the year to better understand science policymaking.
Actions: We decided to make a thorough analysis of Mexico’s regulation and we also shared this knowledge in different kinds of events we had during the iGEM season. We also developed a risk assessment that helped us identify some risks related to one of our chassis and decided to design a biocontainment measure based on CRISPR/Cas9.
Values: Responsibility to guide us during the whole iGEM season and promotion of critical thinking when identifying risks related to our project and measures to mitigate those risks.
Feelings: He is very eager to keep helping us in any project we might work on, he also liked our interest in regulation so he has invited us to different events during the year to better understand science policymaking.
Actions: We decided to make a thorough analysis of Mexico’s regulation and we also shared this knowledge in different kinds of events we had during the iGEM season. We also developed a risk assessment that helped us identify some risks related to one of our chassis and decided to design a biocontainment measure based on CRISPR/Cas9.
PhD Sarah
Yannarell
Opinions: She asked us many things about the genes we are editing and
how we
expect
our constructions to work. She told us working with SinI and making this
synthetic
regulatory network was the best we could do, because, in her experience,
some
other
strategies such as promoter engineering are not very efficient.
Regarding our
approach to avoid and delay sporulation, she also told us it is
something very
well
planned; even when the easiest way was to choose a non-sporulating
strain, they
are
not efficient when producing biofilms nor surfactin.
Values: Perseverance is the main value she expressed to be important because of the complexity of our project. Also, responsibility and respect regarding the biosafety part of our project were also mentioned by her.
Feelings:PhDc Sarah was concerned about the possible output of our system, mostly because there are very few bioengineering techniques for increasing these metabolites production. Nevertheless, she said she has a lot of hope this could work because of our designs.
Actions: She shared with us some protocols for our experimental designs to measure our results in the most optimal way. Even though she talked mainly about B. subtilis, she also mentioned the usage of a sonicator to purification processes, which we used for our Ranaspumins purification. Additionally, we incorporated more factors into our Math Model, and took into account the sporulation issue in our risk assessment.
Values: Perseverance is the main value she expressed to be important because of the complexity of our project. Also, responsibility and respect regarding the biosafety part of our project were also mentioned by her.
Feelings:PhDc Sarah was concerned about the possible output of our system, mostly because there are very few bioengineering techniques for increasing these metabolites production. Nevertheless, she said she has a lot of hope this could work because of our designs.
Actions: She shared with us some protocols for our experimental designs to measure our results in the most optimal way. Even though she talked mainly about B. subtilis, she also mentioned the usage of a sonicator to purification processes, which we used for our Ranaspumins purification. Additionally, we incorporated more factors into our Math Model, and took into account the sporulation issue in our risk assessment.
LBG Mario Peña
Hernández
Opinions: After we explained how we wanted our killswitch to work, he
made some
questions about it, in which he told us we had to be sure there was no
other way
to
avoid sporulation before considering a killswitch system. Even though he
did not
use
CRISPR on bacteria in his previous work, he gave us some insight
regarding the
design of the sequences and things to take into account to be sure our
system
has
the lowest failure probability.
Values: Responsibility when working with modified organisms and perseverance in both the theoretical and experimental work.
Feelings:He expressed his excitement of helping us and sharing his experience, and eagerness to keep giving us feedback and helping us with the experimental design and processes when needed.
Actions: We improved our gRNA sequences designs based on the feedback and experiences Mario shared with us. Our killswitch description is reported on our safety section.
Values: Responsibility when working with modified organisms and perseverance in both the theoretical and experimental work.
Feelings:He expressed his excitement of helping us and sharing his experience, and eagerness to keep giving us feedback and helping us with the experimental design and processes when needed.
Actions: We improved our gRNA sequences designs based on the feedback and experiences Mario shared with us. Our killswitch description is reported on our safety section.
MSc Carolina Montoya
Vallejo
Opinions: After explaining our project, we told her we were considering
a
kinetic
growth model of E. coli in a fed-batch bioreactor for production
of
Rsn-2,
which she considered a good idea, hence, she helped us to decide which
approach
was
the best. Alongside her, we developed a general strategy for that model.
Values: She believes that at creating math models we have to be very creative and think critically.
Feelings: She considered our project innovative and creative, however she emphasized that this single model was not enough for understanding the complexe system for our foams production. She strongly recommended us to make a complementary model if possible in order to have better predictions of our system output.
Actions: We developed our math model based on the general strategy we developed with MSc Carolina, and took into account the parameters she recommended. In addition, we decided to also model the production of Rsn-2 at cellular level. A further explanation of this model is reported in our math model section.
Values: She believes that at creating math models we have to be very creative and think critically.
Feelings: She considered our project innovative and creative, however she emphasized that this single model was not enough for understanding the complexe system for our foams production. She strongly recommended us to make a complementary model if possible in order to have better predictions of our system output.
Actions: We developed our math model based on the general strategy we developed with MSc Carolina, and took into account the parameters she recommended. In addition, we decided to also model the production of Rsn-2 at cellular level. A further explanation of this model is reported in our math model section.
BSc Eduardo Alejandro
Castillo
Aguilar
Opinions: At the beginning of the year he heard our ideas and told us to
take
into
account the necessary time of the simulation's development, since a very
ambitious
model could not be done in the time available. Hence, we decided to
further
delimit
our model, and add some complementary ones to connect all the
simulations into
one
and apply the results to other aspects of the project, such as
entrepreneurship
and
wet-lab.
Values: The value that he considers most relevant for this area is patience, as it was required in each step of the process of understanding the system and its simulations.
Feelings: He was concerned that our aim of modeling the complete genetic network of B. subtilis would be too difficult to accomplish in one year. With his insight, we decided to limit our previous idea of modeling a broader genetic network: from the genes involved in surfactin and biofilm production, and their connection with the competent state and sporulation.
Actions: He mentored us to design and establish a model that originally aimed to create a way for eradicating sporulation. He worked alongside us with weekly meetings on the model “Escaping from sporulation: Modeling the competence switch of B. subtilis”, helping us to code and interpret the results of the model.
Values: The value that he considers most relevant for this area is patience, as it was required in each step of the process of understanding the system and its simulations.
Feelings: He was concerned that our aim of modeling the complete genetic network of B. subtilis would be too difficult to accomplish in one year. With his insight, we decided to limit our previous idea of modeling a broader genetic network: from the genes involved in surfactin and biofilm production, and their connection with the competent state and sporulation.
Actions: He mentored us to design and establish a model that originally aimed to create a way for eradicating sporulation. He worked alongside us with weekly meetings on the model “Escaping from sporulation: Modeling the competence switch of B. subtilis”, helping us to code and interpret the results of the model.
Our 2020-2021 iGEM project is generously supported by
