Team:GA State SW Jiaotong/Communication
Elementary school and junior high school
In late July, team members from ShanghaiTech_China went to Jiancao center to complete primary school, Yunlong County, Yunnan Province, China, to support teaching here. While supporting education, she also gave a lecture on synthetic biology to local elementary school and junior high school students. In addition to introducing synthetic biology and ShanghaiTech_China's project, she showed the students GA_State_SW_Jiaotong's project and PV. After the presentation, the students shared their opinions about our program. This event expanded the scope of our project. It can be the first time children in rural areas come across synthetic biology, which enriches their knowledge and may impact their future learning.
Fig1.Communicated with children.
10/16 Online meeting
On October 16, NPU_China jointly with GA_State_SW_Jiaotong and NWU_China gave an online presentation to about 30 high school students in China, who have experience in high school biology competitions and plan to continue studying biology in the future.
Fig2.Communicated with 30 high school students online
First, students from NPU_China briefly introduced the development history and current status of iGEM and synthetic biology. Then Mr. Shang Xiaoya from the School of Life Sciences of Northwestern Polytechnical University conducted a sharing of biology and scientific research life with the theme of "From the New Coronavirus to Biochemistry". Finally, the NPU_China, GA_State_SW_Jiaotong and NWU_China three teams each introduced their own projects. While introducing our own project, we also introduced ShanghaiTech_China's MIBOM project and shared the university life for those high school students.
Through this event, we shared iGEM and synthetic biology related knowledge, and also promoted our project, which stimulated high school students' interest in natural sciences.
Lambert high school
On October 14th we organized a small presentation at Lambert High School. Lambert High School is a prominent High School situated in Suwanee, Georgia. We have been collaborating with them on their iGem project this year, and we got to visit and present our project to them as well as introduce our college lives in Atlanta, Georgia and in Chandu, China. The projects from our partnership team ShanghaiTech_China and NPU_China, and their college lives are also intoduced at the same time to make the students have more ideas about sythetic biology.
Fig3. Communicated with students and professor from Lambert High School
University
Southwest Jiaotong University
On September 24, we made a presentation about the iGEM projects of GA_State_SW_Jiaotong and ShanghaiTech_China to students and faculty from different majors in Southwest Jiaotong University. In this presentation, members of the GA_State_SW_Jiaotong team firstly gave an introduction to the project background and experimental design. Secondly, GA_State_SW_Jiaotong team members presented ShanghaiTech_China’s project in bone damage repair. This presentation expanded the popularity and influence of both projects.
After that, we showed the students a micro-movie we made by ourselves. The micro-movie combined the knowledge about stress alopecia, which allows the students to learn about biology and experience the fun of biology in a pleasant atmosphere.
In the process, students from different grades and majors of SWJTU actively gave feedback on the presentation. Later, they participated in a Q&A section, demonstrating a strong interest in our project and the iGEM competition, achieved the purpose of publicity.
ShanghaiTech University
On September 17, 2021, ShanghaiTech_China jointly hosted "Follow the iGEMers" with GA_State_SW_Jiaotong. The team leader Rui Su and other members jointly introduced synthetic biology and iGEM competition to about 100 students from various majors. From the content of synthetic biology to the style of iGEM, from experience to shareing, from biological science to computer science, ShanghaiTech_China team let more students from different disciplines realize that synthetic biology is a comprehensive discipline.
In addition, we also introduced MIBOM project of ShanghaiTech_China team and Hnoss project of GA_State_SW_Jiaotong to the students. Most of the students are very interested in this, and a small number of students actively feedback to us: MIBOM can pay attention to some postoperative wound aesthetic problems caused by fracture surgery; Hnoss can take another look at the amount of alopecia gel applied.
Community
In China
On September 19th, GA_State_SW_Jiaotong conducted a community exhibition in Furong Community, Chengdu. Through exhibitions, basic knowledge about stress alopecia and bone injury treatment was introduced to the residents. We prepared promotional materials and gifts for participants and distributed flyers of both teams to residents passing by. Many people stopped, read our flyers, and listened to our project design. After learning about our projects, the residents scanned the QR codes to follow the WeChat official accounts of both teams and fill out the questionnaire. In the game session, we did some mini-games like memorizing cards and card flipping. Combining science with common knowledge, the games allowed residents to learn the knowledge of synthetic biology while having fun in the meantime.
Fig4.Communicated with children and old people from community.
Through community publicity, we successfully delivered the most advanced research results to the general public and get them to perceive the real-life application of synthetic biology.
In the United States
On October 10, GA_State_SW_Jiaotong team members came to downtown Atlanta to promote our project in the community. We put up our posters and distributed flyers on the streets, introduced synthetic biology and our project "Hnoss" to passing citizens, and many citizens showed interest in our project. At the same time, we also introduced the project "MIBOM" from ShanghaiTech_China, which promoted the promotion of the two parties' projects.
Fig6.Communicated with native people.
Through community publicity, we brought synthetic biology concepts and our programs to a larger population and connected them to the life of the general public.
Student involvement fair
On September 14, we attended the Student Involvement Fair held by Georgia State University. It was a student organization fair where representatives from different organizations ranging from athletics to academic organizations came to advertise their clubs to GSU students and invite them to join their clubs. Together with Synthetic Biology Club members, we set up a stand with our posters to introduce the hair loss project and ShanghaiTech’s MIBOM program to the GSU students. Many students showed great interest in synthetic biology and signed up for the club. We also distributed flyers with a QR code for our survey on alopecia-related problems. Overall, the promotion was a great success.
Here is a short video for the fair !
WeChat official account
To expand the influence of our project and the effect of popularization of science, we established a WeChat Official Account named "Hnoss 2021" in July 2021 and officially started operation in September, which has gained
389 followers
with a total of
6,030 views
by October 17
To achieve the purpose of project promotion and collaboration between teams, we introduced our project and forwarded other iGEM teams' projects on our official accounts, including ShanghaiTech_China and SJTang.
We also jointly created a topic named "Weekly Synbio" with Shanghaitech_China to introduce the recent frontier progress of synthetic biology with simple and easy words once a week, and at the same time increase the knowledge of synthetic biology of our team members. We've published seven articles since we established this topic. The most clicked article has reached 3915 views; other articles also received a good response.
Fig7. Article with highest view
In addition, we also forwarded some articles from Dr. Shiyuan Li, who graduated from the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, is currently the Director of Research and Development of Bluepha. Dr.Li's articles have undoubtedly broadened the breadth and depth of the content of our official account.
Film
Our original intention was to design a stage play to promote the concept of synthetic biology to the public, stimulate the interest in scientific disciplines, and promote our project. Therefore, our stage play mainly focused on the ideal design of real-world applications, but not the experiment we did. We hope that such a design can make it easier for the public to accept scientific research results and innovation. This idea is more novel and exciting, and the application on the product side is closer to the real-life of the general public. This form of promotion receives much supportive feedback from various groups since it offers a better understanding of synthetic biology than showing the tedious and experiment process.
Fig8. Shot English version film to spread Hnoss and synthetic biology
Fig9. Shot Chinese version film
To push this idea further, we decided to make a film based on the design of the stage play and put it on social media to make it spread more widely. We also played this file to the students when we were doing the presentation on the SWJTU campus. The film was written and performed all by ourselves to make it a better present. Making a film takes many efforts, which participants contribute, and each participant is encouraged and motivated to show their highlight ideas throughout the progress.
