Team:SDU-Denmark/Tour51

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Biobrick workshop at DTU (2^nd of May - 4^th of May)

Biobrick workshop at DTU.

Our team was lucky to participate in the BioBrick workshop at DTU in Copenhagen, which took place over a full weekend in the spring. The program for the weekend included Safety, USER cloning, general information on iGEM, wiki design and editing, and social events. Our team had not been in the wet-lab at that time, some had not even had a pipette in hands before, so this weekend was a really good introduction to the laboratory, with a good mix of theory and practice. We learned a lot and had very much fun - many thanks to the DTU-Denmark team for teaching us how to make USER cloning and for hosting a great workshop.

Interactive lecture: how to find information

We had a visit from people from the library who taught us how to optimize the search of information in different sources, such as Web of Science, Compendex, Encyclopedia of Molecular Cell Biology and Molecular Medicine, Ullmann, etc. We want to thank them a lot for their time and great help!

The enneagram: discover your type (5^th of June)

Enneagram.

We had a complete day course on “The enneagram”, which is a tool to identify types of personalities. We did this to strengthen the personal bonds between the group, to become aware of our own up-and downsides and to gain awareness of how to use this knowledge in favor of our team and project. Thank you very much to Jane, from the company “Trivselsforum” for her uninterested help!

Ethics workshop at KU (21^st of August)

Ethics workshop at KU.

Three girls from our team participated in the Ethics Workshop in Copenhagen organized by the UNIK-Denmark team. Our project encourages many ethical issues and the workshop was therefore very suitable and beneficial. We learned a lot about dealing with ethical issues in synthetic biology and got many good inputs to an ethics-related discussion about our project. In addition to this we also got in touch with relevant people and organizations that have been able to help us continue with our human practices. We would like to thank the UNIK-Denmark team for the invitation and their work - it has been a very nice workshop.

iGEM meet-up in London hosted by YSB (1^st of September - 2^nd of September)

iGEM meet-up in London.

Our team was very lucky and extremely pleased to be able to participate in the UK iGEM Meet-up organized by YSB (Young Synthetic Biologists) in collaboration with the UCL-team. The event was an excellent preparation for the Giant Jamboree because we could rehearse our presentation and make a first try to design a poster. In addition, we got the opportunity to hear about other teams' projects. We also participated in 6 different workshops: Intellectual Property, Human Practices, Characterization, Public Engagement, Citizen Science and BioArt. The other iGEM teams were very helpful in giving us constructive criticism and many good ideas for future work. Additionally, there were a lot of friendly participants who helped by filling out our questionnaire. Our team gained very much by attending the event - It was both fun and educational. We would like to thank YSB (Young Synthetic Biologists) and the UCL-team for two fantastic days in London.

Study Trade Fair (11^th of September)

Study Trade Fair.

We participated in the annual Study Trade Fair at our university to raise awareness about the iGEM competition, our project, promote our outreach events in October, to get more answers to our questionnaire and to promote the recruiting for next year’s iGEM-team. The day was a great success. We met many interested students who wanted to hear more about iGEM in general and about our project. In addition, we were able to practice our presentation skills.

Old-iGEM Meet-up (18^th of September)

Old-GEM meet-up.

We invited all SDU-iGEM former participants to a meet up… and it was a success! They heard about our project and responded to our presentation with valuable feedback. Our supervisors had arranged and prepared dinner after our presentation, which gave us a chance to discuss the responses. Thank you to all of them for coming and making this a cozy evening.

Sundhedsmekka: An exhibition for medical students

Sundhedsmekka.

Sundhedsmekka is a yearly event, where associations and event groups with interests that concerns medical students can promote themselves. Originally, it was a medical student who started the first iGEM team from SDU. Since then the iGEM teams representing SDU have at least had one medical student on their team. In spite of this, most medical students at SDU have not heard of iGEM, and even synthetic biology is an unfamiliar field to most medical students. By participating in Sundhedsmekka our iGEM team got a chance to explain the concept of the iGEM contest and our own project. It was a great success to talk to all the many interested students and in connection with the conversations; we invited people to attend our “Quiz and Presentation night”, which had premiere in the following week.

Quiz and Presentation night at the Student House

Quiz and Presentation night at the Student House.

The Student House is a gathering place for students and locals, which is located in the center of Odense. The purpose of the Student House is to have a forum where university students can come to study or to take part in social events or both. Volunteers are responsible for the café area, where different events take place frequently. Our team arranged a Microorganism Quiz and Presentation Night at the Student House where around fifty people participated. Our presentation was about the main concepts of iGEM and synthetic biology and additionally an overview of our own project. The presentation was followed by our quiz about microorganisms. Every question had a preamble concerning microorganisms but the question usually was a digression from the subject. Our idea with the event was that the questions should apply to anyone and it ended up being a great success for this reason.