Team:Carnegie Mellon/Our Projects

The Carnegie Mellon University 2014 iGEM team spent hundreds of man-hours teaching students, teachers, and community members about synthetic biology and endocrine disruptors and researching policies, ethics and impacts involved in the latter. We collaborated with other teams to heighten awareness of synthetic biology and promote a scientific interface between the lab and society, while working on a project that will help detect for micropollutants, such as estrogen/estradiol, in water sources at a cost-efficient rate. Our project directly affected how we saw Policies & Practices as a way to start an initiative dedicated to going past the benchmark that limits science classrooms and literacy across America.

• Created Beyond the Bench[mark]; an initiative to educate middle and high school students on synthetic biology and endocrine disruptors

• Presented at 12 events for beta-testing the SynBio Educational Series and raising awareness about our iGEM research on endocrine disruptors

• Set up 4 interviews with experts in endocrine disruptors, water testing, micropollutants, and synthetic biology public outreach

• Delved into the controversial world that is policies, ethics and impacts around endocrine disruptors

• Hosted our first iGEM Meetup with 5 North American teams in attendance, including one high school team from Montgomery, NJ

The 7 areas in which the Carnegie Mellon iGEM team worked on are

• Beyond the Bench[mark] Initiative

• SynBio Educational Series in partnership with DNAZone

• Team Collaborations and an iGEM Meetup

• Project Presentations and Educational Events

• Interviews with 4 Experts

• Ethics & Impacts of endocrine disruptors

• Policies & Politics surrounding micropollutants

With the aid of DNAZone, the educational outreach center of Carnegie Mellon’s Center for Nucleic Acids Science and Technology (CNAST), the iGEM team aided in the development of four kits/labs for students and teachers to use in a classroom setting. These kits were taken out into the community and classrooms to be beta tested for final production occurring in January. They were also shipped out to different points around the United States and to an orphanage in Bolivia for further beta-testing in another language.

Between our first iGEM Meetup, the mailing of a wheat DNA extraction kit, and the help of one of our advisors, the CMU iGEM Team met or worked with six other iGEM teams this summer and fall. Team collaborations and talking in front of our peers helped us analyze our presentation skills, orally and written, when it comes to the project and the kits.

Project Talks with the different science programs and classrooms had a heavy focus on the biology and modeling aspects of our project framed with an introduction on iGEM and quick spiel on the ongoing outreach projects. Twitter helped us connect with teams from around the world and create a timeline for all of our outreach work, which was most helpful when constructing this wiki! The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette interviewed two of our team members, photographed another three then published the article on the front page of "The Region" section of the Sunday October 5th edition.

This year, the CMU iGEM team interviewed five individuals with expertise related to the project, iGEM, or genetic engineering bioethics and the importance behind raising awareness of this emerging field. These very informative talks were discussed and analyzed to increase our understanding and aid in the progress of our project.