Another component of our project involved gauging the awareness of synthetic biology on campus at the University of Sheffield across our five faculties: Arts and Humanities, Engineering, Medicine, Dentistry and Health, Science and Social Science.

We began our interviews by providing each academic with an information sheet containing a brief overview of what synthetic biology is, how it works and how it is currently being explored by iGEM. Following on from this, we set out to answer four key questions:

• What are the initial thoughts/opinions of synthetic biology?
• Where could synthetic biology be applied?
• What are the potential risks they could see?
• What are the current perceptions and views of undergraduates pioneering this new innovation?

As our results were very varied, we have produced some word clouds to show the most popular terms and words used across the university by its academics to help present the answers to these questions:

Applications of Synthetic Biology	Feelings towards UGs participating	Initial thoughts towards Synthetic Biology	Potential Risks of Synthetic Biology

We have also written a full report which outlines the attitudes of faculties specifically which can be found here.