Team:Amsterdam/Human practices

Human Practices

Our human practices efforts centered around our collaboration with Synenergene, an organisation dedicated to fostering responsible research and innovation in synthetic biology. This year and last year, they selected a small group of iGEM teams to conduct real-time technology assessments of their projects, in which teams investigate potential applications and implications of their technology. Specifically, we developed short-term and long-term secnarios that describe how our consortium-based bioproduction technology could be developed and embedded in society. These scenarios will be used by Synenergene’s partners in workshop settings with various stakeholders, with the ultimate goal of ‘developing a socially robust SynBio innovation agenda.’ Besides the application scenarios, we also explored the potential wider problematic impacts of the development of our consortium technology in so-called techno-moral vignettes. Lastly, we presented our research at the stakeholder symposium on synthetic biology organised by the RIVM, where policy-makers and other government representatives engaged in debate with us and each other about the coming impact of synbio.

Application Scenarios

Possible futures of our project

Techno-Moral Vignettes

The potential impacts of our project

RIVM

The Netherlands National Institute for Public Health and the Environment

Collaboration

Working together with other teams