Team:TU Delft-Leiden/Human Practices/outreach

Human Outreach

Zomerfestival and Hortusdag

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On the 24th of May 2014, our iGEM team participated in the annual Zomerfestival, organized by the TU Delft. The Zomerfestival hosts various music, culture, food and technology events for the people of Delft. Our goal was to interest people in the fascinating subject of synthetic biology. For our stand, located in the botanical garden of the TU Delft, we arranged a number of different microscopes: a common light microscope, a do-it-yourself microscope we made for about ten euros, small microscopes that could be clipped on a smartphone, and a microscope made of lego. The accessibility of these microscopes attracted lots of children, some of whom got really fascinated by the different samples we showed them. Meanwhile, our team members had interesting discussions with their parents and other interested visitors about iGEM and synthetic biology in general.

The day after the Zomerfestival, the Botanical Garden organized the Hortusdag, a day on which the garden was open for general public and hosted different stands concerning the subjects of gardening, biology and environment. Our iGEM team hosted a small stand with the microscopes we also used for the Zomerfestival. Our stand mainly attracted children, to whom our team member Janna gave a spontaneous course in sample preparation. The kids were thought to make their own sample from onion and could look at it with the lego microscope afterwards and take their sample home. They really enjoyed it and where fascinated by the fact that they could explore a world unknown to them with their own experiment.

Dutch National Meet-up

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On 21st of June 2014 our team attended the Dutch National Meet-up organized by the Wageningen team. During this event we had the chance to present the initial phase of our projects, to get to know all other Dutch team and to get inspired by previous iGEM members.

In addition, we had the opportunity to discuss with the members from Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu (RIVM) that were present to the event and were proposing a collaboration with all Dutch iGEM teams.

The day ended in a very relaxing manner, with a delicious BBQ.

Synthetic Biology Meeting at the RIVM

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The RIVM, which stands for RijksInstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu (National Institute for Public Health and the Environment) and the Rathenau Institute have organized a meeting concerning synthetic biology, titled " Verantwoord omgaan met Synthetische Biologie: Wat is het en wat zijn de kansen en mogelijkheden (Dealing responsibly with synthetic biology: what is it, and what are the chances and possibilities)." The goal of the meeting was to inform the attendants, mostly policymakers, about synbio and to start the discussion on if and how the current policy concerning synbio needs to be changed. To provide some concrete talking points, the Dutch iGEM teams were invited to present their project and host a discussion.

Tomek and Duco joined as representatives of our team. They told a very interested audience about ELECTRACE and iGEM in general at an info market and a presentation. It was very interesting to hear that many people liked the ELECTRACE concept and were really enthusiastic about our project. Besides that, the meeting provided a great opportunity to speak to a large amount of synbio policy specialists.