Team:Goettingen/outreach human practices

iGEM teams gather at Munich!

At the end of May, Julia Menzel and I (Lara Schmitz) went to Munich as representatives of our iGEM team to meet members of 11 iGEM teams from all over Germany. The weekend started with an official welcome by the iGEM team Munich and we heard a really interesting talk from Prof. Dr. Friedrich Simmel from the TU Munich. After that, we had a get-together with a barbeque to get to know the members of the other iGEM teams. Because of the good weather and the nice people we had a great evening with a lot of fun.

The next day, all teams had the opportunity to present their projects. Most of the projects were really interesting; some teams were working on really intriguing topics. A discussion was held and the teams voiced their suggestions and comments about the projects of others. The day was wound up with a nice dinner at a typical Bavarian beer garden.

On Monday, the last day of our trip, we had some free-time to explore Munich, visit the English Garden and relax a bit. Along with people from the iGEM teams Darmstadt, Freiburg and Saarland, we visited the Marienplatz in Munich and had lunch with them. After that, we joined the meeting at the Center for Advanced Studies (CAS) with a focus on Synthetic Biology with international speakers. We were one of six teams which had introduced our project to the audience in another brief talk. After that, we were really tired and took the last train back to Göttingen. But because the ICE had a delay, we missed our connecting train leaving us stuck at Fulda thereby compelling us to stay for a night in a hotel. This was the curious end of an eventful weekend and iGEM meeting in Munich.

All in all, it was an exhausting weekend, but we also had a lot of fun with the other teams and we got to know a lot of people. The presentations were very interesting and we received a lot of constructive feedback and new ideas for our project.

For more information, please visit the homepage of this event. Click HERE.

To see more photos, click HERE.

SynBio Day

During the meet-up in Munich all the german iGEM Teams had the opportunity to participate in a Workshops. The participants at the Workshop agreed to an All Germany SynBio Week, which was scheduled in the second week of August.The day we chose was the 15th of August. On the SynBio Day we planned to present our project to the public of our city, Göttingen. The idea behind the SynBio Day was to increase awareness and the ridding of any prejudice or fear of Synthetic Biology. These aims could be achieved by talking face to face with all kinds of people on public places or making informative posters addressing aspects of Synthetic Biology in order to reach people via social media. Furthermore, we did a survey to get an idea about the general opinion of the public about Synthetic Biology.

On this SynBio Day from 10 AM to 5 PM, our team members talked to the citizens of Göttingen at an information booth, which was located at the iconic Gänseliesel in the city center. By showing lively and comic posters, we caught the attention of many. People of different ages stopped by the booth, looked through all the posters and asked questions. Most of them were very curious about the field of Synthetic Biology and our topic especially. Our team members took pleasure in answering all their questions and as a bonus, cakes and muffins were offered to thank them for their attention and interest.

To see more photos, click HERE.

GZMB Symposium 2014

The GZMB symposium is a significant event held once a year in the Göttingen Center for molecular Biosciences (GZMB). Each year, scientists present their findings. This time around, our team managed to give a talk to let more professors and students learn about our project and receive feedback on the same;which, would go a long way to improve our performance in the final presentation.

HERE is the poster for this event.

On this day, we were able to arouse curiosity in many from the audience. For that, we thank our speakers - Julia, Shantal and Joanan! Along with applause, we also received some constructive criticism regarding what and where we could do better. For example, Prof. Dr. Stülke, one of the supervisors of the iGEM team last year, gave us good suggestions regarding how to proceed with the dry lab section. With the improvements made and the positive feedback from the veterans we've been interacting with, we feel more and more confident and ready for Boston! yay!

To see more photos, click HERE.

Colloquia

Although we have hosted several seminars both in and out of the university, we have planned a grand colloquium for the 28th of this month. In addition to that, there will be an “experts-only” colloquium on the 20th of this month; which will only involve the team, its supervisors and a handful of experts in Infection Biology from our university’s medical microbiology center. This event is meant to ensure that we did justice to the topic at hand and to rectify factual errors (if any).

The invitation for the grand colloquium on the other hand, has been extended to as many people as possible; both from academic and non-academic sectors. Our goal here is to spread the word on not only our project in particular but also to inspire more people into participating in forthcoming iGEM jamborees.

Educative videos as part of human practices online!

As part of the human practice segment, videos with cogent explanation of simple laboratory protocols and methods were uploaded onto YouTube. This way, we intend to not only increase the awareness of the public on iGEM but also expose them to general laboratory working conditions. These videos can be accessed HERE.