Team:Marburg/Human Practices/Mayor
Lord Mayor
The saying "Other cities have a university, Marburg is one." summarizes the quite special flair of the city, as of its about 80,000 inhabitants over 20,000 are students.
In addition to the teaching function of the Philipps-University Marburg, the city was able to establish itself as
a location in the field of medicine and scientific research. These sectors now even have the largest employment
shares within the city.
This strong coexistence of natural sciences and the population can be found in only a
few German cities and Marburg is one of them. Our team thus took the opportunity to interview the local Lord
Mayor. Thomas Spies has been actively involved in local politics for over 20 years, and his experience as Lord
Mayor of this city offers an insight that few others could match.
In a 60 minute interview, we had the privilege to hear from him about effective science communication measures, education, how to handle feedback from the public, and finally, how research sites make the leap into business. We also provide the full transcript of the interview.
First we got into a conversation about science communication and education. Mr. Spies illustrated how city institutions can work hand in hand with scientists to achieve more together. The city provides a framework, but the core must come from the commitment of the involved teachers. A team like iGEM Marburg is a prime example for such commitment, because we not only have the ambition to improve the world and society we live in, but also bring the know-how on research, scientific experiments and the necessary time investment.
To support such engagement Mr. Spies listed several lecture series and the adult education center as possible
frameworks supported by the city. With our suggestion, he is thinking about including more scientific topics in
the offerings of the adult education center, which should basically serve the general further education of the
public.
But he also sees other educational projects with students as groundbreaking and helpful for the city.
Here we explicitly mentioned our cooperation with miniPCR, which produces and sponsors the BioBits kits for
teaching at schools.
The city is also willing to talk about such projects for long or short term funding.
Approaching the cities institutions for support or collaboration is thus something we would like to encourage
other future iGEM teams to take on.
Furthermore, we could learn from Mr. Spies how feedback and demands are processed in local politics. In the context of our discussion with the KiJuPa we wanted to ask exemplarily, how wishes and suggestions of the parliament arrive in the city. The mayor replied that any demands would be taken very seriously, especially because they were very concrete in this context. To ensure that as many requests as possible get a proper implementation the city either directly approves a request or at least works on a suitable alternative.
Finally, we wanted to gain an insight into the economic opportunities that the city promotes, especially in relation to cooperation with the university. Marburg has an formidable reputation in this regard, and in a 2019 ranking of the most startup-friendly cities in Germany by the IfM Bonn, it was ranked 9th out of 200, ahead of most major cities [1]. Over the years, more and more companies with a background in pharmaceuticals and research have also settled in Marburg, most recently Biontech. Thomas Spies explained that this development was very close to the city's heart and that innovative projects such as iGEM were the cornerstone for progress.
He said that for years the city has increasingly supported investors, for example by providing working space, who in turn want to bring research from the university to the market. He also spoke positively about MAFEX, with whom we had already established contact at that time. According to the mayor, it is impossible to predict exactly which innovation will ultimately become truly profitable, but that is precisely what the expertise of the researchers in the university would be good for.
This feedback has given us confidence that we are on the right track. Not only had we already established contact with most of the recommended institutions ourselves, but our project itself fits perfectly into this picture. The cell-free systems of chloroplasts offer faster, cheaper and safer possibilities for development, also for new companies, and we hope that this will help green genetic engineering research to gain momentum worldwide in the future.