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Team:Hong Kong-CUHK/humanpractice.html
From 2014.igem.org
Contents |
Human Practice
Energy Day
The event “Energy Day” is held by Faculty of Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong on August 20th, 2014.Hundreds of participants, including professors, researchers and experts from related industries were involved.This activity aimed to promote new technology in energy aspect, which was highly related to the goal of our project. We had a whole-day poster session, in which we present our project to various audiences. Our project aims at turning excess carbon dioxide in atmosphere to useful biofuel, methane. It was a wonderful opportunity to promote our project and also receive professional comments, which are discussed in our questionnaire analysis. Apart from sharing our project, we also introduce iGEM and synthetic biology, which has aroused a great interest among the visitors. They were amazed by the concept and the application of synthetic biology, and realized the underlying industrial value. Indeed, synthetic biology could make significant contributions in energy-related fields. We were glad to share our enthusiasm on this topic with others and also inspired them for further research and application. “Energy Day” has successfully raised the awareness of professionals towards synthetic biology and a novel environmental friendly way to generate biofuel.
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Presentation
In order to introduce the idea of synthetic biology and iGEM to high school students, we have done multiple speeches in Hong Kong. We aim to educate the young students about the creativity and potential of synthetic biology, a booming, novel topic which is not covered in their curriculum. We hope to arouse their interest and hopefully inspire them to join iGEM too. Currently, no Hong Kong team participates in HS iGEM competition. Encouraging high school students to join iGEM is crucial and exciting, as iGEMers, we believe it is our responsibility to play an active role. To demonstrate the unlimited applications of synthetic biology, we shared innovative award-winning projects in the past iGEM competitions. We also discussed our current project with them, eager to know their comments. Results from surveys provided us different insights into our projects, which were highly-valued. After the talks, many students approached us and asked us further details about iGEM and synthetic biology. It is truly rewarding to see so many students are interested and inspired. We hope Hong Kong HS iGEM teams can be seen in the near future, producing more novel ideas.
Laboratory workshop
As synthetic biology involves more specific equipment and advance skills, most of the high school students do not have chance of having real laboratory experience. We hope to provide some basic introduction of common equipments and techniques to the students. By holding laboratory workshops, we offer the students a hand-on experience of doing experience. We held a workshop to 10 students. Handbooks containing relevant experimental design, background knowledge and protocols were distributed. Experiments such as gel electrophoresis, plasmid DNA extraction…etc, are introduced. In addition, we gave pre-lab talks, emphasizing on safety issue and waste disposal. It is our belief that proper attitudes and manner go before skill. Throughout the workshop, each student got to handle their own experiments, with our guidance and support by the side. Needless to say, most of the participants were thrilled and eager to learn more about other lab techniques. Laboratory workshop gave a great interactive experience between the high school students and our team.
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Art Fair
Art fair is an annual university event for different student societies to promote their activities. In the event, we opened a booth to promote both iGEM and our project. Pull-up banners introducing synthetic biology and our projects were set up. Poster presentation provided us an opportunity to interact with CUHK students from all disciplines, sharing our project and promote iGEM. Since we decorated our booth with photos from lab, many non-science students were attracted by those apparatus and machines and thus stop by. Besides the posters, we also produced and distributed leaflets, which give more detailed information helping people to understand more. This event was also a great chance for us to recruit iGEM team for the next year. We kept the contacts of those interested students and will send out invitations for recruitment soon. Overall, this event was successful in introducing iGEM and synthetic biology. We hope the seed we planted will give us more potential iGEMers.
CUHK Information Day
Information day is a University event open to the public. It aims to introduce all the university programmes to high school students. In the hope of encouraging establishment of High School iGEM teams in Hong Kong, we also participate in this event, promoting iGEM and our project. Visitors asked us all kinds of questions, regarding to synthetic biology or genetics engineering. It was also a chance for us to learn how the public understand and view related projects. We treat this issue seriously as we think that publics must know as much as possible before applications based on synthetic biology. It is crucial for the public to gain accurate knowledge and not be affected by some biased media reports. In addition, many high school students were quite interested and we offered to help if they plan to form a HS iGEM team in the future. We hope the idea of iGEM and synthetic biology would be more wide-spread in Hong Kong, particularly among the young students.
Promotion in Bradford, United Kingdom
We have also promote synthetic biology and iGEM in University of Bradford, United Kingdom, an university which has not participated in iGEM yet, which bring up the interest of the local students to synthetic biology and iGEM.
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Survey
100 questionnaires from secondary school students.
All of them have studied biology.
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70% of them never heard of iGEM nor synthetic biology.
20% of them have only heard of iGEM.
Most of them learnt from high school biology.
Most of them think that workshop is the most effective way to raise public awareness towards synthetic biology. We have held workshop (photo added)
Just a few of them think there were enough ways for public to reach synthetic biology.
Most of them think that they are not familiar with synthetic biology and iGEM.
Most of them have positive attitude towards synthetic biology.
Most of them think that synthetic biology is safe.
Overall, they think synthetic biology is good for the whole society.
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80% of them are interested in synthetic biology and all of them will join activities related to synthetic biology if they were given a chance.
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Only part of them feel the pictures are dangerous.
70% of them will accept a more common adaptation of synthetic biology in daily life.
Most of them think our project is beneficial to the human being and will help to solve the problem of energy crisis. Environmental friendliness is the most attractive highlight to most of them, while cost is the main concern to them.
Most of them have shown a better understanding in synthetic biology after the workshop.
33 questionnaires from undergraduate students
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88% of them have studied biology.
64% of them are (were) major in science or engineering.
Almost half of them have heard of iGEM from different way.
Most of them think that poster and workshop are the most effective ways to raise public awareness towards synthetic biology (Show our poster too)
Most of them think there’s not enough way for public to reach synthetic biology.
Most of them think they were not familiar with synthetic biology nor iGEM before the activity.
Most of them have positive attitude towards synthetic biology and think it was safe and overall good to the whole society.
67% of them are interested in synthetic biology however 55% said they would join activities related to it if they were given a chance.
64% of them feel professional about the pictures and most of them agreed to a more common adaptation of synthetic biology in daily life.
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70% of them think our project is beneficial to the human being and it might help solving energy crisis and global warming.
Environmental friendliness is the most attractive highlight to them in our project, while efficiency will be their main concern.
Most of them have shown a better understanding in iGEM and synthetic biology after the presentation.
15 questionnaires from post-graduate students.
80% of them have studied biology.
Most of them major in science other than life science.
47% of them have heard of iGEM.
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Most of them think there’s not enough way for public to reach synthetic biology.Part of them are concerning the safety of synthetic biology. Most of them think that synthetic biology is interesting and is good for the whole society, but not everyone of them would be more aware about issues in synthetic biology neither do they interested in activities related to it.
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Most of them think that workshop will be the most effective way to raise public awareness towards synthetic biology. Most of them feel professional about the pictures yet most of them have no opinion towards a more common adaptation of synthetic biology in daily life. Most of them think that our project might help solving energy crisis. Environmental friendliness is the most attractive highlight to them, while efficiency will be their main concern. Most of them agreed their understanding towards iGEM and synthetic biology has increased after the presentation.
Collaboration:
<a href="https://2014.igem.org/Team:Hong_Kong-CUHK/collaboration.html" target="_blank">Click here for Collaboration</a>
Comic
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Poster
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