Team:IISER-Tirupati India/Education
Introduction
Our project, OviCloak, is at the junction of Reproductive Health Rights, Microbiome, and Synthetic Biology. We focussed our outreach on these facets of our project by reflecting on our values and goals to create a positive change in society.
OUR GOALS
- Facilitate discussion on Reproductive Health in the public
- Raise awareness on the environmental impact of contraceptives
- Encourage people to follow safe sexual practices
- Encourage people to make more informed and responsible reproductive choices.
- Spark curiosity among people on synthetic biology
- Bridge the gender gap in STEM and encourage girl students to pursue higher education in the STEM field
- Encourage students to develop creative solutions using synthetic biology to tackle challenges
- Communicate our idea with the public
HOW DID OUR WORK IMPACT THE SOCIETY?
- We conducted webinar series and Instagram live series to break the stigma surrounding Reproductive and Sexual Health and facilitate discussion.
- We encouraged people to take a pledge to use greener alternatives of contraception and practice eco-friendly disposal.
- We conducted surveys to understand the status of reproductive health and rights awareness in our society.
- We engaged with the public actively through social media to educate people on the misconceptions and myths surrounding reproductive Health.
- We interacted with students and people to foster discussion on science and synthetic biology through podcasts, mini-school, interactive sessions and guest talks.
- We introduced students in college and high school to iGEM to encourage them to participate in the competition in the future
While engaging and interacting with people from different walks of life we learned about the reproductive health issues faced by the people and got a deeper perspective on the relevance and impact of OviCloak. When communicating with the public we also learned to look at synthetic biology in a different light, encouraging us to look at the bigger picture than as an isolated subject.
Reproductive health and rights
“Reproductive freedom is critical to a whole range of issues. If we can’t take charge of this most personal aspect of our lives, we can’t take care of anything”
- Faye Wattleton
Access to reproductive health care services and the freedom to exercise Reproductive rights is one of the basic human rights. However, the taboo surrounding sex, abortion, and contraception hinder our freedom to exercise our fundamental human rights. Understanding the conservative nature of Indian society and its tendency to shy away from discussing Reproductive and Sexual Health, our team wanted to initiate conversation and break the stigma surrounding reproductive health.
Shush the Hush: Webinar series
We conducted two webinars in the Shush the Hush webinar series to discuss reproductive health, contraception, sexually transmitted infections, and safe sexual practices.
For our first webinar in the series “Shush the Hush: Let’s take a stigma break”, we invited Dr Renuka Dangare, Head of the patient experience at Proactive for her, a digital health platform for women and Apurupa Vatsalya, a certified sexuality educator as guest speakers for our webinar. Through the webinar, we discussed the situation of sexuality education in India, contraception and sexually transmitted diseases, the importance of consent, pornography and masturbation, emotional wellness and feminine products. The webinar received an overwhelming number of 500+ registrations. The webinar was conducted over zoom and streamed live on youtube to increase accessibility.
We invited Ms Karishma Swarup, a sex educator and a proactive social media influencer as the guest speaker for the second webinar in the series titled “Shush the Hush: Let’s talk contraception!”. The webinar went on to discuss Sexually Transmitted Infection (STIs), prevention and their symptoms, contraception for the LGBTQI+ community. Through the webinar, she explained how to use contraceptives correctly and compared the effectiveness of the different contraceptives along with their possible side effects. She emphasised the importance of using trustable sources for addressing any concerns to make responsible and informed decisions. The webinar received 50+ registrations and was conducted over Zoom.
To encourage the participants to talk about their concerns and doubts, we collected the questions prior to the webinar, maintaining their anonymity. The public was very receptive to the webinar content and encouraged our initiative. A significant fraction of the audience shared with us that the webinar was very informative and they could learn something new through it. The webinar succeeded in raising awareness about reproductive health and busting myths and misconceptions around it.
Ask about it: Insta live series
We conducted two Instagram live sessions in the Ask About it Insta live series to discuss menstrual hygiene, Sexually transmitted infection (STI) and Urinary tract infection (UTI).
For the first Instagram live, we invited Alankrita Pandey, founder of Titli Foundation, which is non-profit organization management promoting the usage of sustainable menstrual hygiene products amongst rural menstruators. During the interactive session, we broke down some of the popular superstitions and myths surrounding menstruation and explored the more sustainable options of menstrual hygiene products. The live, saw the participation of over 300 people and 550+views and saw active participation from the audience. Through the session, we could successfully communicate with our audience about the pros and cons of menstrual hygiene products which would help them make more informed choices and start a free dialogue about menstruation.
To watch our Instagram live, see Ask about it: Let’s talk about Menstrual Hygiene
For the second Instagram live, we invited Ankita Gharge, a gynaecologist at Proactive for her, a digital platform for female healthcare and wellness. The session was focused on Sexually transmitted infections and Urinary tract infections and discussed their symptoms, diagnosis, transmission and treatment. Through the session, we wanted to address the common doubts and concerns surrounding STIs and UTI.
To watch our Instagram live, see Ask about it: Let’s talk about STD and UTI
Green Contraceptive Session with Prakriti Club
Our team held an interactive session with the environment club of our Institute: Prakriti focussed on the conservation of nature and mitigation of global warming. Through the session, we introduced the concept of green contraceptives and discussed the ecological risks posed by contraception and the green alternatives currently available in the market. We also discussed the importance of promoting research to facilitate the development of new green contraceptives to fit the different needs of the consumers.
In the end, we introduced our idea to the members of the club to discuss the environmental impacts of OviCloak. The session provided us with an opportunity to discuss and introduce the concept of green contraceptives and the discussion enabled us to probe deeper into the impact of OviCloak on the environment.
Pamphlet on Green Contraceptive
Population growth is one of the key drivers of climate change, and contraceptives’ ability to curb population can lower the burden on the environment and indirectly contribute to reducing the carbon footprint. However, some of the popular options of contraception such as condoms, oral contraceptive pills, and hormonal IUDs pose several risks to the environment.
In an effort to raise awareness on the environmental issues posed by contraceptives our team designed a pamphlet, which was then circulated around. The pamphlet provided information on the ecological risk posed by contraceptives and the concept of green contraception. In addition, we also provided details on the right disposal of contraceptives. The pamphlet was designed and distributed to raise awareness on green contraceptives and to enable people to make informed reproductive choices.
Pledge for Green Contraceptive
Following the distribution of the pamphlet on Green Contraceptives, we wanted to inspire people to take into consideration the ‘greenness’ of their contraceptives when making their choices. This led us to initiate ‘Pledge for Green Contraception’, which was conducted online through Google Forms and signed by 134 participants. The pledge read as follows:
"I am aware of the threats posed by the modern contraceptive methods to my environment. I declare that I take the responsibility of reducing my carbon footprint by looking for greener alternatives of contraception and I will practice eco-friendly disposal of contraceptives. "
We believe that this initiative could enable people to make more responsible and informed reproductive choices.
Sexual Health Week Activities
To celebrate the Sexual Health week from 13th Sept to 19th Sept, we engaged actively with the public through Social Media and launched an Instagram Reel series, ‘That skipped chapter in your biology class.'
Through our social media posts and reel videos, we communicated with the audience about Sexually transmitted Infection (STI), the importance of consent when engaging in sexual activity, representation of sex in media and porn and the myth surrounding the association of hymen with virginity. The reel series was well received and had over 23.7k views in total.
Check out our Instagram
Reproductive Health and Rights Survey
We conducted a survey on Reproductive Health and Rights to understand the prevalence of Reproductive Health and Rights related awareness in India. The survey saw the participation of over 633Indian participants over 18 years of age and was conducted online through Google forms. We felt that it was important to understand the extent of awareness to understand the gaps and pitfalls in our approach in educating the society and devising remedial measures to improve the same.
When conducting the survey we ensured that the safety rules were observed and that informed consent of the participants was obtained.
From the survey analysis, we understood that School/College has a significant role in educating people on Reproductive Health and Rights. Hence, improving the curriculum to emphasize the risks and means of protection from STIs can make them aware of the various aspects of Reproductive Health. From the survey, we also made a surprising observation that only half of the respondents were aware that the Indian constitution guarantees Reproductive Rights to its citizens. Revising the curriculum, to incorporate reproductive rights would equip individuals to make informed choices and seek legal remedies in case of sexual abuse or coerced pregnancy. The analysis also revealed that the extent of awareness is similar irrespective of gender, residential location, or educational background.
The results of the survey could be useful for social scientists and educators working to improve the status of sexuality education in India. To make the results and findings of the survey more accessible among the community, we published a research article on the study in the iGEM Vector, an initiative from iGEM Team MSP-Maastricht. See iGEM Vector to read our article published in the Journal
Birds and Bees - Virtual Art Exhibition
Art is a powerful tool when it comes to spreading awareness about a social cause. We put out an art exhibition on the theme of World Contraception Day and got artists from all over the country and the world to present their ideas on the topic. We received arts-themed around the World Contraception Day -26th September 2021 which is that “Let every pregnancy be a planned one”. We put out a call for artists on our social media pages and even conducted one-on-one sessions with artists for brainstorming sessions. .
We received entries in the form of traditional art and paintings and posted these entries on our social media pages as a form of virtual art exhibition for all to rejoice in the creativity of the artists and get educated on this invaluable topic.
Microbiome
Since our project OviCloak, engineers commensal bacteria we planned to conduct outreach programmes to help students and the public appreciate the exciting field of microbiome.
Bac-talk: Know your Intimate Microbe friends
We conducted a webinar for students across India focusing on the reproductive microbiome and its impact on reproductive health. We invited Dr Brenda Anne Wilson, Professor of Microbiology at the University of Illinois. The webinar received 110+ registrations from 25 colleges all over India.
Microbiome studies have become an active field of research and have been steadily gaining popularity amongst researchers and the public alike. Much of these studies are focused on the gut microbiome, hence we wanted to introduce the concept of reproductive microbiome among the student community. The webinar was aimed to help the audience appreciate the importance of the reproductive microbiome in maintaining reproductive health and its association with diseases.
Interacting with the young minds: A session with Cambrionics
Cambrionics Life science is a young educational organization that engages with school students in a fun and non-traditional manner to spark their curiosity in biology. We were invited by Cambrionics life sciences and gave us the wonderful opportunity to hold a session with the students in their Summer Camp and interact with curious young minds.
Through the session, we introduced the concept of the microbiome and commensal bacteria and discussed how bacteria is not necessarily always bad. We regulated these discussions by formulating 10 MCQ questions which were used to conduct live polls. The interaction led to interesting discussions on microbial ecosystems and interactions. We also briefly introduced to them the concept of synthetic biology and how synthetic biology can be used as a powerful tool to solve some of the biggest challenges we are currently facing. This was met with a lot of insightful and inquisitive questions.
The students were proactive throughout the session and shared with us some of their creative ideas. The interactive session saw the participation of around 70 students who actively contributed to the discussion.
Your friends from down there: Interactive Zine
To raise awareness on the reproductive tract microbiome we planned to create a comic zine to convey the concept through art and communicate to the public. The zine depicted what the reproductive microbiome is, why are they present, and how can one take care of them. Following the meeting with Sophie Wang, we incorporated her suggestion to make the zine “interactive” which led us to create the Interactive zine where the readers can write their thoughts. For distribution of the zine we collaborated with Team Taipei, who distributed our zine to school kids. We also released our zine on our Instagram page to make it more accessible, in addition, we also sent them to stakeholders and experts we met during our iHP meets. To make our work available to a more inclusive audience, we subsequently translated the zine to Hindi, one of the most commonly used languages in India.
Synthetic Biology
“Science is not finished unless it is communicated.”
- Mark Walport
Communicating science is as important as science itself. It can help spark curiosity and build a scientifically literate community. Through our outreach activities, we wanted to connect with people from different backgrounds and levels of expertise in synthetic biology and foster discussion on science and synthetic biology.
Gene gala: Mini Summer School
Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields across the globe are highly dominated by men, with women making only a small fraction of the workforce in STEM. The lack of representation of women in science and social conditioning often leads them to underestimate their aptitude and steer them away from STEM. Our team wanted to take the initiative to bridge this gender gap in STEM, and this led us to launch “Gene Gala”, a Mini- Summer School to introduce high school girls to Synthetic Biology and encourage them to pursue higher education in the STEM field. To actualise this idea, we collaborated with Team IISER Kolkata and the Directorate of Education, GNCT Delhi, to conduct the Mini-summer school over the course of 5 days. Gene Gala saw the registration of over 90 girl students studying in their final year of high school.
Through Gene Gala, we wanted to provide a platform for girl students to cultivate a creative and problem-solving mindset and appreciate the concepts of Synthetic Biology. We utilised the initial four days to discuss the core concepts of synthetic biology, encourage them to participate in discussions, and communicate their ideas with their peers.
We discussed biomolecules that make up a cell, bacterial genetics and how they are modulated, molecular techniques for redesigning genetic circuits and ethical concerns associated with synthetic biology. After each session, we divided the students into breakout rooms where we conducted fun quizzes, activities, and puzzles to keep them engaged and promote discussions. On the final day of the workshop, we introduced them to some exciting iGEM projects and encouraged them to develop solutions of their own to real-world challenges using the recently learned concepts of Synthetic Biology. The students actively contributed to the discussions and came up with several interesting ideas for designing their own Genetically Modified Organism.
When conducting Gene Gala, we were met with the challenge of covering broad concepts in a short duration of time and facilitating discussions. We came up with an effective break-up of the curriculum to achieve this and conducted breakout sessions for discussions and activities.
We encouraged them further to pursue STEM for higher education and provided the details on opportunities of Higher education in STEM in India, relevant scholarships, and the career paths in STEM through a day-wise Handbook which was provided to the students. We received very positive feedback from the students who participated in the Mini-summer school for inspiring them and giving them a sneak-peak into the world of Synbio and its opportunities.
We have documented our experience in conducting Gene Gala and have elaborately detailed our strategies for designing the curriculum, conducting the activity session and designing the materials used,which can be used by future iGEM teams when conducting similar workshops. See Gene Gala to learn about our experience.
See Contributions page for the Materials and Educational tools.
SynTrack: The Podcast Series
We are a diverse team with people from different disciplines united by our shared passion for biology, and we were thrilled to share our excitement and curiosity about synthetic biology with people outside of our iGEM Team. This shared interest led us to launch SynTrack, a one-of-a-kind podcast launched for science enthusiasts who have just begun to explore the realms of Synbio. The podcast tries to capture the different flavours of the Synbio, ranging from experiments in the laboratory to opportunities in entrepreneurship, potential applications and ethical and moral implications of using genetic engineering. The podcast follows a casual conversational style podcast guiding the listeners through various aspects of Synbio as they get on with their everyday tasks. SynTrack provides an opportunity for the listeners to look at synthetic biology in a positive light and appreciate the potential of Synthetic biology as a powerful tool capable of revolutionising the landscapes of Health, Agriculture, Environment, and Bioenergy. The podcast included episodes that were recorded in collaboration with Spoorthy Gowda (Student at IISER Tirupati), Team Groningen, Team FCB- UANL, Team Ioannina, and TU Delft. The podcast was recorded over Zoom or Gmeet and launched on Spotify and Google Podcast.
The podcast was also translated into Hindi, a language widely spoken in India, and made available on Spotify. The podcast is beneficial for the local population who have better command over Hindi than English. Hindi is not a popularly used language for science communication. Launching the translated version of the podcast allowed us to tap into a broad audience of listeners and provided us with an opportunity to connect with listeners and communicate science crossing the language barriers.
Listen to SynTrack
Listen to SynTrack | Hindi
Let’s talk about iGEM: A Knowledge Hub session with Next Gen Scientists Foundation
iGEM has contributed significantly to foster innovation in synthetic biology among the student community, and the number of iGEM has increased over the years. However, we noticed that the number of teams participating from Asia in the competition is significantly lower when compared to its western counterparts from Europe and North America. We wanted to encourage students in India to participate in iGEM, which led us to collaborate with the Next Gen Scientists Foundation to launch an initiative, “Let’s talk about iGEM”, to reach out to other STEM students and Synthetic biology enthusiasts across the nation.
The Next Gen Scientists Foundation is an organisation governed by a student body from students across India to connect all Indian Life Science Researchers. In our collaboration with them, our team hosted a Knowledge Hub session via their discord server called the Indian Life Science Network, connecting us to students across the nation with interests in Synthetic Biology. The session was further made available via Youtube to make it more accessible to a larger audience. We invited Ms Shruti Shridhar, iGEM Ambassador Asia, as the speaker for the event to talk about the competition. Through the Knowledge Hub session, Shruti introduced the audience to the iGEM competition and discussed the values of iGEM. The session was conducted as a conversation between an iGEM ambassador and one of our team members like a live podcast, providing the audience with the provision to ask their questions and get them answered then and there.
The session guided the audience on what iGEM is, the multidisciplinary nature of the iGEM projects, and how iGEM fosters advancements in synthetic biology. It further navigated the audience through the process of iGEM, covering various aspects of the projects from Team Building, Funding, Collaborations, Human Practices, and the time frame of the competition. She also encouraged the audience to avail the iGEM mentorship programme, which allows the iGEM team to connect with mentors to guide them on their iGEM journey. The session gave all-around information to Synthetic Biology Enthusiasts about the iGEM competition and how to navigate through the iGEM journey.
Watch Let’s talk about iGEM: Knowledge Hub Session
The Handbook of Biotechnology laws in India
When working on the project, we realised the importance of biosafety when designing and performing experiments. This motivated us to look at the legal framework regulating biotechnology research in India. In this process, we realised that the biotechnology laws are scattered throughout The Constitution of India, which makes it difficult for people without legal knowledge to understand the legal protocols and refer to relevant laws. This inspired us to draft a handbook to guide the researchers through the relevant laws in Biotechnology that they might have to go through before their research. The book compiles relevant biotechnology laws in India and Multilateral legal agreements of which India is a part of. It attempts to capture the multiple facets of law that must be abided by while performing scientific experiments in biotechnology in one place. When reading the various biotechnology laws, we also recognised some gaps in the legal framework, which motivated us to incorporate a section on gaps and unattended problems in the legal architecture into the Handbook. We also added a section for future iGEM teams to refer to with regard to safety practices that must be followed over the course of their project. The book was launched with the aim to promote responsible research among the research community in India.
In collaboration with Team IISER Thiruvananthapuram, our team identified important biotechnology laws, identified the relevant Biotechnology laws, and designed the framework of the Handbook. The book is subdivided into four chapters:
- Animal experimentation and Clinical trials
- Export-Import Policies
- Environmental Safety
- International Agreements
- Unattended Problems and Legal Gaps
The handbook could not include chapters on biocontainment and Intellectual Properties owing to time constraints. In the future iGEM Teams if developing a similar handbook can incorporate these chapters in their contents.
During the drafting of the Handbook, we met with Dr Harilal Madhavan, a development economist and faculty at IISER Thiruvananthapuram; Miss Parvathy, a student from the National Law School of India University; and Dr Subha C C, a faculty at the Department of School of Law in Christ University, Bangalore who provided us valuable advise and feedback enabling us to revise and improve our Handbook.
Interactive Workshop with Agastya Foundation
When collaborating with iGEM Teams and reading the past iGEM projects, we were deeply awed by the possibilities of synthetic biology and its potential. This motivated us to reach out to students to introduce them to synthetic biology and encourage them to pursue Synbio for higher education. To realise this, we conducted a workshop collaborating with Agastya Foundation for students with a passion for Biology.
Agastya Foundation is a non-profit organisation based in Bangalore, India, aiming to nurture creativity and curiosity through education to students from lower economic strata. During the session, we introduced them to the foundational concepts in synthetic biology and gave them a flavour of the multidisciplinary facets of synthetic biology. We further introduced them to iGEM to inspire them to participate in iGEM in future. Following this, we conducted a brainstorming session, during which we encouraged them to develop ideas based on synthetic biology for contraception. The students actively participated in the discussions and came up with creative solutions and questions about developing novel contraceptives. We further discussed with them the opportunities of STEM education in India and the relevant scholarships and internship opportunities to pursue STEM. We also introduced them to OviCloak, discussing the biological concept behind the idea, our motivation and plans for implementation.
International Survey on GMO
Our team conducted an International survey in collaboration with Team MSP- Maastricht, Team Aachen, and Team IISER-Pune-India to understand the attitude of the public towards genetic engineering organisms and the applications of synthetic biology across the world. The survey received 259 responses from Asia, Europe, America, Africa and Australia and was conducted through Google Forms.
The survey questions were designed to understand the perception towards synthetic biology and GMOs, how receptive are people towards the different applications of synthetic biology and understand the concerns people have about GMOs. The survey revealed that the people largely had a positive perception towards synthetic biology and GMOs while they also expressed their concerns about potential damage to the environment, potential harm to human health, potential misuse, and ethical concerns on the creation of artificial life. We also observed that the opinion towards GMOs varied depending on the context of the application. Our analysis also revealed that the general outlook towards synthetic biology and concerns towards its usage were strikingly similar in both Europe and Asia. The results of the survey analysis are published on the iGEM wiki page, which would be useful for future iGEM teams to gain an insight into how receptive people will be towards synthetic biology and its various applications.
An Interview with iGEM Ambassador Asia
One of our team members interviewed the iGEM Ambassador of Asia, Miss Shruti Shridhar, to write an article to be published in Next Gen Scientists Foundation (NGSF) Blog. During the interview conducted we discussed her iGEM experience, the journey to becoming the iGEM Ambassador to Asia, plans on expanding iGEM in India, and the challenges in introducing iGEM to Indian colleges and highschool. The Interview article would be helpful for current and future iGEMers to learn about opportunities after-iGEM. The article is currently in the process of being published in the NGSF Blog, which has viewers from over 73 different countries allowing us to reach out to students of the scientific community.
Guest Talk at Synteraction
Our team was invited to deliver a guest talk at Synteraction, a summer school programme launched by Team iGEM IIT Madras for their first year B.Tech students. Through the talk we wanted the audience to appreciate how synthetic biology can be employed to solve social challenges and how various disciplines intersect and overlap during the development of a project. During the talk, we introduced the audience to our project idea: OviCloak - A Novel Contraceptive and discussed the biological concepts on which the idea is based. We also talked about the multidisciplinary nature of the project and introduced the audience to the various facets of our project, such as genetic engineering, mathematical modelling, and human practices, to help them appreciate how the various disciplines of physics, mathematics, biology, and social science is integrated during the development of the project. We walked them through the importance of Human Practices of iGEM and how our team incorporated the iGEM values into our project. We explained how we engaged with the stakeholders and incorporated their feedback while developing the project. We further discussed the outreach activities launched by our team to engage with the public and their importance in initiating thoughtful discussions about the values related to our project. We also navigated the audience through our iGEM journey and how we tackled the challenges posed by the pandemic.
A session with Synbio enthusiasts
Our team held an interactive session with the Synbio enthusiasts in our Institute to kickstart their iGEM journey. Through the session, we guided our future potential iGEMers for planning and developing their project and addressed their queries regarding the various aspects of iGEM. During the interactive session, we walked them through our iGEM journey from team building to project development and the challenges we faced during the pandemic. Through the session, we discussed the multidisciplinary nature of the project and building a diverse team with different fields of expertise to help look at the problem from different perspectives. We also discussed the timeline of the iGEM Project to help them plan their iGEM journey. We also discussed the importance of identifying the stakeholders and engaging with them to integrate their feedbacks while developing the project. We also guided them through the funding aspects of the project. We also talked about the challenges we faced during the pandemic and how we tackled them.
Publishing an article in the Manthan magazine
Our team published an article in the Manthan magazine, a student magazine launched by the students of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Mohali, to promote our project OviCloak among the student community. Through the article, we wanted to provide an overview of our project. We used the article to discuss the goals envisioned by our team, the hurdles we faced during its development, the progress we made and the impact our project could have on the world around us.
DNA Day: An intersection of Art and Synthetic Biology
The Discovery of DNA is an important milestone in the history of genetic research. To celebrate and commemorate this day, three of our team members created an artistic representation of DNA. The first image created by Shivam Kumar titled “ASTRA DNA” is an amalgamation of biology and astronomy representing the advancements and developments made in the macro and micro world. The second image created by Lochan Chaudhari was titled “DNA dancing to the tune of life” representing the dancing DNA being transcribed to give rise to the melody of life. The third image created by Komal Pati was titled “The secret of life” representing how DNA lays the foundation of life leading to the diverse creatures we see today. The images were published by MolecularCloud for DNA Day Photo Contest of which ASTRA DNA and DNA dancing to the tune of life received Silver and Bronze prize and The secret of life received an honourable mention.
Interview with Genscript
Our team was given an opportunity to be interviewed by Genscript to discuss OviCloak and how we used synthetic biology to develop a contraceptive. The interview provided us with an opportunity to interact with professionals in the field of synthetic biology and gain public exposure. During the interview, we discussed our idea and the social impact of the project. We also discussed how we plan to incorporate Human Practices into our project. We also discussed our aim to instigate a fresh perspective on contraceptive development using synthetic biology. The recorded video of the session was uploaded on Youtube by Genscript, which provided us with an opportunity to communicate our idea to the scientific community.
Engagement through Social Media
As social media is a powerful tool to drive changes in society in real-time, our team actively engaged with our audience through our social media handles.
We used Instagram to raise awareness on Reproductive Health and through the Reel series, posts, polls and stories. We conducted the Insta live series “Ask about it” with Ms Alankritha Pandeya and Ankitha Gharge to talk about menstrual hygiene, STIs and UTIs. We also launched the reel series “That skipped chapter in your Biology Class”, which reaped over 23.7k views in total to talk about Sexually transmitted Infection (STI), the importance of consent when engaging in sexual activity, representation of sex in media and porn and the myth surrounding the association of hymen with virginity.
Our team also gave our viewers a sneak peek of our project work from time to time. Our wet lab members conducted two Instagram live sessions demonstrating Agarose gel preparation and SDS gel preparation to give our audience a short glimpse of our daily routine. We also released our promotional videos in English through Instagram and Youtube to communicate our idea, OviCloak, with the public. We subsequently also released the promotional video in Sign language to communicate to a more inclusive audience.
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