WELCOME TO PENN STATE iGEM 2014!

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Human Practices

Presentation to NEWBio Teachers - Penn State Center for Science and the Schools

Since past iGEM teams have been very active in outreach and education, we began this summer with the goal of doing the same. We found a perfect opportunity with NEWBio, also known as the Northeast Woody/Warm-season Biomass Consortium. NEWBio is "a regional network of universities, businesses, and governmental organizations dedicated to building robust, scalable, and sustainable value chains for biomass energy in the Northeast (NE). Driven by the broad societal benefits that sustainable bioenergy value chains could provide, NEWBio aims to overcome existing barriers and dramatically increase the sustainable, cost-effective supply of lignocellulosic biomass while reducing net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, enhancing ecosystem services, and building vibrant communities."

The purpose of NEWBio is to help train secondary school educators in the principles of bioenergy. In this way, NEWBio seeks to "train the trainers" that will have an impact on the future career's of the nation's youth. The program is a week long workshop where teachers are exposed to the many areas of biology in a variety of ways. The week is spent listening to talks led by professors and groups, exploring the campus, and ultimately making new lesson plans for the school year.

We presented to a group of 10 teachers on our research and the need for biorenewable fuels. Our message to them was how the tools of synthetic biology can be used to combat energy and environmental crises and demonstrate how they can introduce simple synthetic biology techniques to their classes. Through this outreach we facilitated the flow of information from the bench to the classroom. The iGEM team is a great asset to this program, as we can provide the teachers with information in a way that students would enjoy and understand. This is also a great experience in learning how to better discuss our iGEM projects and present to groups of people who may know little about the subject.

Here we were able to show these teachers ways that they can explain synthetic biology to their students. These are easily reproducible activities and are fun, too!

Engineering a Metabolic Pathway

Assembling a Plasmid Activity

Presentation to Science-U High School Students

Central Dogma Relay

This experience builds on the reputation set up by Penn State's iGEM teams in previous years as a very knowledgeable and accessible group that is committed to educating others. It can be continued by future iGEM teams, and was so popular this year that it could easily be expanded to include more students in future years. We believe that through this type of community involvement, especially with the energy and creativity level that is typical of iGEM teams, a strong foundation will be created that the next generation of engineers will spring off of.

Engineering a Metabolic Pathway: ROUND 2

Our SCIENCE U Presentation

Download our complete presentation and take a look! Note that this material is geared for students with little prior knowledge in the subject area, and is meant to be a very interactive presentation.