Education and public engagement
Event in the Planetarium of Pamplona
On the 11th of September, we went to the Planetarium of Pamplona to present our project to the general public and to make aRADIAMARS get more known in Pamplona. Although COVID-19 still limited us, we were able to prepare the event in the Pamplona planetarium's room in which we have been working all summer. It was our first time organizing an event, therefore it was stressful to decide where everything would be and where people would circulate because we had to avoid creating crowds of people. We announced this event on our social media, to get the maximum number of people into the Planetarium.
We prepared several infographics and a poster as the medium of divulgation. As anyone could come to the event, it had to give information but taking into account that most of them did not know about the topics our project was about. The infographics were used to give context in order to introduce people to the project. On them, we talked about synthetic biology, women related to biology, iGEM, inventions due to spatial exploration, Mars’ characteristics, and the missions which landed in 2021 on Mars. Although the main goal was to give context, we were completely open to making a deeper explanation if the public wanted so. We found out that many people wanted to know more about these topics, an interest that caused an awesome rise in our morale. As a result, all these infographics lighted up the spark in people’s eyes and made them become interested in our team and the project.
Once we had given context to the project, we used the poster to talk about our project. Thanks to the infographics they could catch up on the poster's presentation and they were able to understand our project goals and how we did to accomplish them. The audience asked questions about aRADIAMARS and the team itself, moreover, we received feedback and ideas we liked a lot.
After the event, the team got together and we discussed the good things we had done and what we could improve for future events. We recorded some moments of this event, so if you want to live the whole experience and to fully see how this event looked like, we have made a video that summarizes it.
To sum up, this experience contributed to our knowledge of the preparation of presential events and how to unfold when the public is right in front of us. This knowledge and the infographics, and the poster we developed prepared the team for the next event we had aimed for: the aRADIAMARS' presentation on our schools.
We presented our project in our respective schools
When we started with the project in October 2020 we didn't know each other, because, as the two previous teams of Navarra Biogalaxy, each one of us studies in a different High School in Navarra. At the beginning of the project, we had not enough knowledge to do a presentation on our schools but, by the 13-22th of September of this year, 2021, as we had finished the lab work, we all had enough control over the project to do a presentation about aRADIAMARS. Each member of the group went to their school and did a presentation to several classes in order to reach and disseminate the project among the biggest group of people we could.
The presentation was built up using infographics and the poster used at the event at Pamplona's Planetarium. First of all, we introduced who we are and as in the previous event, we set the context of our project. Even before getting into the poster, we perceived that our classmates were already amazed by the project. When we got to the poster, we started talking about the previous Navarra Biogalaxy teams, as some of the participants on those teams, were once students of our High Schools and in this way, we could honor all the work they did, which ended up on the creation of aRADIAMARS. We talked about our strategy and what we had planned to achieve with it, making emphasis on the continuation we give to the last projects and how we leave an open door for future ones. To end up, we encouraged all of them to begin with scientific projects, telling them that even young people like us can make amazing projects and contribute to the scientific community.
We expect this event to encourage the students to look forward to participating in this kind of initiative on Navarra, so we hope that the future of synthetic biology in Navarra is assured. After the presentations, plenty of our classmates were interested in iGEM and maybe they could become members of the next Navarra Biogalaxy team!
We attend "Biospain" a biotech event
This year, we had the unique opportunity of attending the "Biospain" event, which took place in Baluarte, the Auditory and Congress Palace of Navarra. BIOSPAIN is the largest biotech event organized by a national bioindustry association in Europe and one of the largest in the world, it was held from September 27th to October 1st, 2021. Our team went on 3 different days in which we learned a lot and it helped us to finally decide our project’s sustainable development impact.
On September 27th we attended an online talk on Pamplona’s planetarium about Genome Project Write, given by the famous scientists George Church and Andrew Hessel. We also had the opportunity to meet some members of the initiative iGEM-EPIC. Just before the presentation finished, we had the chance to ask some questions to Church and Hessel. This occasion showed us the awesome people you can meet thanks to Navarra Biogalaxy, Navarra’s Government, and being interested in biology. This talk also warmed up the team for the next days of the "Biospain" event.
The next day, on September 28th, two of our members, Leyre Ortiz and Andrea Urdánoz, went to the Lekaroz Business Campus in an entrepreneurship meeting organized by the Social Innovation Unit of Navarra. In this meeting, we met again with iGEM-EPIC and we learned about the future of synthetic biology and how the world will change due to it. We were motivated on this day because we want to be part of that future! There is also a video of this day for you to watch!
On our last day, on September 29th, the whole team assisted at the on-site sessions of "Biospain" in Baluarte. This was a completely new experience because it was our first time attending an event of this magnitude.
During this day, we attended several talks on different topics such as vaccines, climate change, bioproducts, or the political situation of GMO and genome editing techniques. At the breaks, we talked about the most interesting ones and how some of the information learned could be applied in our project. We also thought about all the ethics implied on the rise of synthetic biology and how in the next years, it will become a part of our everyday life.
Biospain 29th September opening ceremony
Biospain 29th September Bioproducts presentation
In one of the talks, it was discussed the implication and need of GMOs in Europe, they talked about the importance of resistant and better crops for agricultors because crops do not only benefit humans but also all the animals that have to be feed. They said that we are getting behind on synthetic biology but we could close the distances if laws changed. This talk fully inspired the team and reaffirmed the agriculture application aRADIAMARS has on Earth.
aRADIAMARS team on Baluarte during Biospain
Our Blog and Social media
To socialize the project we have a blog and also social media. In the blog, which is published on Pamplona´s Planetarium web page, we explain the process of our project month by month to the general public. To reach them, apart from English, we use Spanish and Basque languages. If you want to know all the steps our team has done since our beginning, we truly recommend you reading the blog.
In social media, we have used Instagram (@igem_biogalaxy) and Twitter (@NavarraBG_STEM) to show our Biogalaxy project. Through social media, we are able to keep in contact with youngsters and we can disseminate aRADIAMARS in a fast and global way. It is also an extremely good way of contacting other iGEM teams! We consistently upload news about the project and events we participate in, remember following us!
