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Team:Carnegie Mellon/Our Projects
From 2014.igem.org
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 impact involved in both. 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 educate others about what is synthetic biology at its core and how can it offer solutions to everyday problems.
Created the SynBio Educational Series, kits that will be distributed through DNAZone (www.cmu.edu/cnast/outreach-dnazone/) for K-12 students in the Pittsburgh area, and beta-tested with another 350 students and teachers in other US cities and in Bolivia; guided 600 labs between the months of April and October
Interviewed a world-renown expert on remediation techniques used to eliminate estrogenic compounds in water, the director of the Center for PostNatural History, and a PhD Reverend on bioethics and genetic engineering
Hosted our first iGEM Meetup which was attended by five teams from the Midwest and Northeast and collaborated with two teams in modeling and policies & practices
SynBio Educational Series
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 testing.
Team Collaborations
Project Talks
Project Talks with the different programs had a heavier focus on the biology and modeling aspects of our project framed with an intro 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, and ran a picture of another three on the first page of the Regency Section on Sunday, October 5th.
Interviewing the Experts
This year, the CMU iGEM team interviewed five individuals on their relationship with the project, iGEM, or genetic engineering bioethics and the importance behind raising awareness of this emerging field. Anytime that we took to talk to someone helped us understand and progress in our project just a little bit more, and we wrote up the lessons learned from each one.
Ethics and Impact
Policies
