Team:Moscow/Communication
Education and Science Communication
Overview
Despite iGEM's criteria sharpened for synthetic biology, we have got requests for some extra education and science communication activities. We believe that the true iGEM's project has to meet the needs of society. So we tried to extend our activities.
Main missions that we pursued:
- acquaintance with synthetic biology of a non-biological audience
- development of synthetic biology and biotechnology in Russia
- raising awareness of the problems of depression and psychiatric illnesses
- disclosure of the role of iGEM in the development of synthetic biology, engaging and helping future generations to participate in synthetic biology projects and iGEM particularly
TARGET AUDIENCES
Summer Schools Workshop and Lectures
Audience (by age): Middle School, High School, Students Audience (by field of activity): schoolchildren and early students who are interested in biology
Purposes:
- an acquaintance of schoolchildren and early students with synthetic biology,
- discussion of synthetic biology in an open dialogue format,
- raising awareness of vaccines in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic,
- raising awareness of the problems of depression and psychiatric illnesses,
- disclosure of the role of iGEM in the development of synthetic biology, engaging and helping future generations to participate in synthetic biology projects and iGEM.
Choose of materials: lectures in a dialogue format, workshops, free discussions
Interaction with the audience: all lectures were held in a free dialogue format. Also, we shared our social networks to contact us and to give feedback later.
The “Summer School” multidisciplinary seminar school, formerly the “Researcher” summer school, the “Russian Reporter” summer school, sometimes just the Summer School, is a Russian annual multidisciplinary summer school that has been held since 2004. Since 2009 it has been carried out with the organizational support of the Russian Reporter magazine, and since 2013 it exists on the basis of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna. https://letnyayashkola.org/
"Piligrim” is an annual specialized school with international coverage. It inculdes advanced training in biology, chemistry and medicine for prospective children and teenages, encourages their participation in individual and team competitions and tournirs. https://ipbz.ru/bioshkola-piligrim/
More details:
We took part in organizing programs of two schools: "Summer School" and "Piligrim". Both of these schools are aimed at raising the awareness of schoolchildren and students in modern biology. Their goal is to make it easier for them to choose a future specialization. In these schools all lectures are held in a dialogue format, students also openly communicate with teachers before and after classes. If someone is too shy to give feedback during the school itself, he/she could always contact the lecturer later on social networks.
We wanted to tell schoolchildren and early students about synthetic biology to increase awareness about it. Synthetic biology is not a well developed field in Russia. It is not included in biological programs of educational institutions, therefore, students often graduate, knowing almost nothing about this area. We want the younger generations to know more about the opportunities and problems in this field and to be able to build a career path in it if they feel like it. Therefore, our lectures introduced not only theoretical foundations. We talked about how to start a project or take part in a competition like iGEM. We also held a practical workshop on bioinformatics because knowledge of it is important for any project in modern biology.
We want to emphasize that we talked about synthetic biology and helped young people who got interested in it, but we do not promote it in an advertisement-like way. If for some students our lectures result in understanding that synthetic biology is not their way, it is our success too.
We are in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccine awareness has become an important issue in society, so we also gave a special lecture on genetically engineered vaccines.
In "Piligrim" we talked about metabolic engineering, modern vaccines, iGEM, and our project. At the "Summer School" we gave lectures about metabolic engineering, various iGEM projects (including our own) and competition itself, and held a workshop on bioinformatics.
Feedback received: the school organizers thanked us for the materials useful for the future path of young people. The children were inspired, especially a lot of us were asked about the solutions of world problems with the help of synthetic biology and how exactly scientists work in laboratories.
Festival Lecture and Activities
Audience (by age): Middle School, High School, Students, Adults.
Audience (by field of activity): non-biological (“wide”).
Purposes:
- discussion of synthetic biology,
- acquaintance with synthetic biology of a non-biological audience at the festival,
- raising awareness of the problems of depression and psychiatric illnesses,
- disclosure of the role of iGEM in the development of synthetic biology,
- engaging and helping future generations to participate in synthetic biology and iGEM,
- BioLegoGo development
Choose of materials: lecture, survey, games, free discussions at the counter
Interaction with the audience: The lecture had a free dialogue section at the end, everybody was free to talk with us and give feedback during the festival, we shared our social networks to contact us and to give feedback later.
Geek Picnic is the largest European open air festival dedicated to popular science, modern technology, science and art. The first festival was held in St. Petersburg in 2011. Since 2014, Geek Picnic has been held in Moscow and St. Petersburg. In 2016, the first Geek Picnic was held in Israel (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geek_Picnic https://geek-picnic.me/ ).
More details:
Since synthetic biology is poorly developed in Russia, a wide audience knows almost nothing about it, so it is important to talk about its opportunities and problems at festivals. Also in Russia, there is a stigmatisation problem with psychiatric disorders, so raising awareness of it became the second mission of our festival activity. Third, many schoolchildren and students at such popular science festivals are looking for their life path and want to learn more about different areas in biology, and we were glad to tell them about synthetic biology and iGEM.
At the “Geek Picnic” festival we told the non-biological audience about iGEM, the possibilities of synthetic biology and the problems with diagnosis of psychiatric disorders, as well as described our project. At the end of the lecture, there was a section for a free discussion with listeners. We spent the whole day at the festival stand so that anyone could come up and ask us all they wanted to know but were afraid to ask about synthetic biology and psychiatric diseases. We also left our contacts so that all those people could ask their questions if they were embarrassed to do so at the festival.
During the festival, students often approached us and asked how to take part in such projects. Therefore, our work was important for future generations that are only starting to find their way in synthetic biology.
Moreover, we prepared educational games. We have developed an entertaining and educational survey about depression and synthetic biology and a board game about the functions of different zones of the cerebral cortex. People clearly stayed interested, many of them asked for our social media contacts to learn more about synthetic biology and depressive disorder.
We continued to develop the project BioLegoGo, which was initiated last year. This game allows everyone to feel like an engineer assembling a plasmid. It should be noted that biology students liked the game even more. According to the feedback received from the players, many descriptions in the game are complex and it is difficult for a non-biologist to figure it out without our help. Thus, we received valuable information that will help to refine, improve and make the game more accessible. We will definitely pass on this knowledge to the next generation of our team and help them improve it further.
Feedback received: several undergraduate students said they were very keen to take part in such projects, but did not know how to. We were happy to share our experience and satisfy their expectations. Festival attendees were interested in the possibilities of synthetic biology for diagnostics. We were asked many questions specifically about depression. We also received a lot of useful information on BioLegoGo and broadened our human practices selection.
Development of synthetic biology and biotechnology in Russia
Audience (by age): Students, Adults
Audience (by field of activity): biological students, non-biological students and adults (“wide”), potential biotechnology investors
Purposes:
- attracting the attention of people and investors to the field of synthetic biology and biotechnology in Russia
- establishing communication between leaders of biotechnology projects in Russia
Choose of materials: we noticed that at many youth festivals there are no biotechnological platforms where people could get acquainted with projects, and project leaders get to know each other, so we decided to do it ourselves
Interaction with the audience: lectures had a free dialogue section at the end, we shared our social networks contacts to receive feedback later
The Digital Ball is the first in the history of Russia youth cultural and business platform, a unique format that brings together students, young professionals and experts to jointly shape the scientific and technological future of Russia. https://digital-ball.ru/
This time we broached a subject wider than synthetic biology and tackled the problem of biotechnology in Russia. iGEM teaches us to develop not just educational theoretical projects, but potentially viable products. Unfortunately, the biotechnology market is poorly developed in our country. We wanted to make a contribution to its development, so we acted as collaborators in organizing a biotechnology section at the “Digital Ball” festival. We invited representatives of biotech startups to one platform, where they could meet, exchange information, present their projects to a wider audience and meet potential investors. Among those invited were: Stanislav Koshechkin, Executive Director of Knomics, Head of Medical Projects at ANO Sensor-Tech Laboratories, and our leader as a representative of miPression Kirill Reshetnikov. We believe that such events will facilitate the development of biotechnological projects in Russia, including those related to synthetic biology and iGEM.
Round table discussion about depressive disorder
Audience (by age): Middle School, High School, Students, Adults
Audience (by field of activity): non-biological (“wide”)
Purposes:
- drawing public attention to the problem of depressive disorder
- removing social stigmas and debunking myths about depressive disorder
Choose of materials: we decided to build the event in the form of a dialogue of experts from different fields about one problem in order to show it from different sides
Interaction with the audience: lecture had a free dialogue section at the end, everybody was free to talk to us and give feedback after the event, we shared our social networks contacts to receive feedback later
Cultural Center ZIL is the first and the largest palace of culture in Moscow.
The “Summer School” multidisciplinary seminar school, formerly the “Researcher” summer school, the “Russian Reporter” summer school, sometimes just the Summer School, is a Russian annual multidisciplinary summer school that has been held since 2004. Since 2009 it has been carried out with the organizational support of the Russian Reporter magazine, since 2013 - on the basis of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna.
More details: Together with «Summer School» we have arranged a round table discussion at the ZIL’s lecture hall. During this event, experts were to discuss the subject of depressive disorder and its diagnosis. Among invited were:
- Psychiatrist, employee of the scientific unit of PKB # 1 and specialist in depressive disorders - Ph.D. Alexey Pavlichenko;
- Neurophysiologist, biologist, senior lecturer of the Department of General and Special Psychology, State Autonomous Educational Institution of Higher Education "Moscow City Pedagogical University", Samara branch - Daria Gromova;
- Clinical psychologist, consultant psychologist and resident of the "Pure Cognitions" project - Polina Kim;
- And our leader, Kirill Reshetnikov, represented miPression and biotech startups.
Consideration of the problem from different angles, drawing public attention to it, as well as increasing the listeners’ level of education in diagnosis were the main goals of this event. We hope that such discussions contribute to reduction of mental disorders’ stigmatization in modern society. Unfortunately, it’s an acute problem in our country, but we are glad that our project helps to improve the situation.
Social Media
Audience (by age): High School, Students, Adults
Audience (by field of activity): schoolchildren and early students interested in biology, senior biological students and graduates, non-biological (“wide”)
Purposes:
- Cover most important topics of synthetic biology and depression for a wide audience
- Destigmatize depression
- To tell about iGEM competition in Russia
Our team also promoted synthetic biology on social media (links?). We explained functions of miRNAs, how the CRISPR/Cas system works, and how it helps scientists. In the scientific section we covered such topics as molecular changes in the human brain during depression, a connection between stress and depression, and types of depression. To destigmatize depression, we ran the "Depressive Story" section, in which we shared stories of eight great people who became famous despite their depressive disorder. This section was the most popular among our subscribers and received regular comments and great views. As an interactive experience, our team played a game with the subscribers where they had to find the wrong statement about depression and afterwards were able to see reasons why it was not correct.
The card game
Audience (by age): Middle School, High School, Students, Adults
Audience (by field of activity): schoolchildren and early students interested in biology, senior biological students and graduates, non-biological (“wide”)
Purposes:
- raising awareness of the problems of depression and psychiatric illnesses
- development of knowledge about synthetic biology and iGEM projects within biologists as well as non-biologists
Choose of materials: We chose the form of a card game, as it is an easy way for educating people, while having lots of fun.
Interaction with the audience: We are planning to receive feedback from the players through e-mail and our social media accounts. We are interested in how the game can help the players in deeper understanding the topic and in what way it will change their perception.
More details:
We did a triple collaboration with teams from Denmark SDU and Taiwan NCKU to develop a card game about depression. The game is aimed at people interested in the issue of depression and wanting to learn more about its causes, treatment and organizations dealing with depressed patients. The game was created for educational purposes, as it contains facts about depression, methods of its detection and treatment, as well as information about organizations that provide assistance to patients. The game should also be interesting for participants in the iGEM competition since some of the categories of the game allow you to learn more about the biological component of our projects dedicated to the detection of depression, although they do it in different ways.
The game consists of 4 categories: general questions about depression; questions about specific facts related to depression; questions about organizations where you can get help if the player or friends of the player are depressed and questions related to the projects of each of our iGEM teams.
The game is available in the form of cards in 4 languages: English, Russian, Danish and Chinese. The game can also be played online via the quizlet app.
Links to 4 categories of quizlet games:
Fact-based questions (igem_moscow)
Expansion package (igem_moscow)
The storyline game
Audience (by age): High School, Students, Adults
Audience (by field of activity): schoolchildren and early students interested in biology, senior biological students and graduates, non-biological (“wide”)
Purposes:
- raising awareness of the problems of depression and psychiatric illnesses
- drawing public attention to the problem of depressive disorder
- removing social stigmas and debunking myths about depressive disorder
Choose of materials: We chose the form of a card game, as it is an easy way for educating people while having lots of fun.
Interaction with the audience: We are planning to receive feedback from the players through e-mail and our social media accounts. We are interested in how the game can help the players in deeper understanding the topic and in what way it will change their perception.
More details:
We also developed a storyline game with the NCKU team. The game allows you to better feel the emotional state of a person who is depressed. Unlike the first game, this one was not created for educational purposes but is designed to combat the stigma surrounding depression and give a player an understanding of a depressed person's emotional state.
By choosing different options, the user can create a unique story, but written through the eyes of a depressed person.
The game is available as an html page that can be opened here