We are a skillful and persistent group of nine Finns. We started as a group of students who didn't really know each other, assuming that we were going to spend our summer studying synthetic biology with strange colleagues. In the end we got a bunch of new friends and (in addition to studying synthetic biology) we just might have spent one of the best summers of our lives.
Overview
2015-UESTC TEAM
Combined with the development of iGEM, which is of the synthetic biology background, and the actual situation that we are in the southwest region, our team considered to implement our human practice mainly from three aspects, aiming to make more individuals know and participate in iGEM, even unite schools and universities of southwest together, combine theoretical research and products production.
Considering that the students have curiosity in new things and infinite development possibilities in the process of learning. Aiming at different levels of education stage, our team preached with the aid of university knowledge, from shallow to deep, respectively, in kindergarten, primary school, secondary school and university. On the one hand, we expect that we can cover education levels as complete as possible; On the other hand, we hope to instill correct scientific thinking to children from an early age, and try our best to eliminate peoples’ prejudice to the synthetic biology.
Southwest Union of China
Now teams in southwest China is less, but there is no lack of colleges have good conditions and great interests. We united UESTC software team and Sichuan University, all of us had taken part in iGEM. On the one hand, we can share our experience with each other and accelerate the progress of the projects; on the other hand, we can help Sichuan Agricultural University and Southwest University for nationalities with the aid of competition experience. Most noteworthy is that we also invited senior high school students’ representatives and members of the Biology Maker, and we hope to help with the establishment of high school team. At the same time, we can strengthen the contact with social biology amateurs. Ultimately the most important, we hope that Southwest Union of China can stay strong and stable, which form long-term and close cooperation, and expand its influence and strength.
Project Promotion
iGEM Club
UESTC introduces iGEM to freshmen every new school year. Although the students are passionate about it, they don't know how to contact the iGEM. In view of this situation, we establish the iGEM club this year, which mainly help low-grade students to understand iGEM quickly, and provide them the competition information timely. Furthermore, we can teach them experiment skills and guide their study direction. Meanwhile, the club members also provide an indispensable help for our project. Despite of the beginning scale of our club, we believe that there will be more synthetic biology enthusiasts to join us and develop iGEM team together in the future.
Southwest Union of China
For our team, the establishment of the union provides a great opportunity to demonstrate our project prior to going to America, and we received a lot of optimization views from other teams. Not only that, we also got rich views which have a positive meaning for our project development. Of course, we provided necessary help for other members’ progress and development.
Practicability
Biotechnology Company
Throughout calendar year teams’ human practice of UESTC, those teams’ publicity activities are only limited to campus or around the campus, not really achieve the purpose "to show synthetic biology to more different groups". As a result, this year our team go out of the campus, communicate with Anno Medical Devices Co.Ltd and Jindouyun Hackerspace Company. Not only did we introduce them iGEM and magnetotactic escherichia coli, but also get a lot of valuable opinions from them. At the same time, we also contacted the Director of the Medical Device Industry Technology Innovation Strategic Alliance of Sichuan Province, which will strengthen our iGEM Southwest Union of China in the future cooperation.
Biology Maker Studio
Out of the campus, we have also come into contact with Chengdu Biology Maker. They are all biology lovers gathered from different jobs do their own bioinstrumentations. During the communication, we found that they are very interested in iGEM and willing to participate in iGEM in the future, so we invited them to our Southwest Union of China, and we also paid a visit to the Biology Maker Studio. In our meeting, we both put forward new ideas, and have further discussion about the future development of synthetic biology.
