Team:Korea U Seoul/Practices
The main goal of our human practice was to introduce synthetic biology to as many people as we could, regardless of their major. We introduced our program "Gil", along with its application in the scientific research. Prior to the seminar, we carried out a survey aiming to understand people's level of knowledge. In order to obtain a reliable data, our sample for the survey varied from people with no prior knowledge of synthetic biology to those majoring in it. The survey included some information regarding one's background knowledge on synthetic biology, the appliances of the program Gil, and especially "open network" and "open data". We focused on the topic of open research because we utilized a lot of various open source to develop the software, and we believe that open research is the core value of synthetic biology and computing.
Prior to the survey, our team wanted not only the data collected from the survey but an opportunity for people to know about Synthetic biology and our project. Therefore, the survey contained questions of background knowledge on Open data and synthetic biology while still using vocabulary and definitions easy enough for people with no prior knowledge on this field to understand.
We conducted the research for seven days and obtained 183 answers. Also, the survey was written in two languages: Korean and English.
From the survey targeted at the general public, we got some interesting results. The 60% of the people did not know what synthetic biology or open data was, but they did say that not only synthetic biology but science field would benefit from their connections with open data. Most people thought that it would widen the understanding and also bring about a more effective way of our data searching.
The response from the IGEM members, who already had plenty of knowledge of Synthetic biology and its connections with networking, was not so different. 58% of them responded that they have had research experience on redesigning cell metabolic pathways, and agreed to the term that our project will help to find efficient pathway regulations. Moreover, they responded that such projects like "Gil" will reinforce collaboration among scientists dedicated to the field by allowing by the ubiquitous sharing of information.
With the survey results underlying, we started to introduce synthetic biology, the competition IGEM and our project 'Gil' to the people. As texts could limit the transfer of knowledge aimed at the general public, we tried to involve interactive activities in order to efficiently pass on the knowledge about synthetic biology's usefulness. For the professionals, we focused on introducing the purpose of our project in future synthetic biology research in depth.
April, at Seoul National Science Museum
For two continuous days, we ran a booth in ‘Family Science Day Exhibition’ hosted by Seoul National Science Museum. Since the museum was mainly for young children, we prepared activities for them and the parents. First of all, we brought many jellies and helped them make ‘sweet DNA' models. During the activity, the kids could learn the structure of DNA molecules and its basic properties. While the children making the sweet DNAs, we explained about synthetic biology and it principles using posters that we made and GFP samples to the parents. Besides, we made some other booth organizers or adults to play the “BioBrick Puzzle” which Team UT Tokyo made in 2012. Since it was also a software project, we could learn which features are needed when constructing a software.
August, hosted by Team Ellan Vital Korea
We joined the “iGEM Korean Team Meetup” which took place on 15th of August. Our team not only introduced our project 'Gil', but also support and mentor Korean High School iGEM teams participating the Giant Jamboree this year. By helping Ellan Vital Korea organize the meeting, we shared our experiences about Jamboree and research. It was a great time to share an opinion about each project. As they gave us feedback on our program as well, we were able to improve the ‘Gil’ to be more user-friendly.
September, at Korea University
Our aim does not stop in just informing people about synthetic biology and ‘Gil’. We tried to give realistic help to people who have a deep interest in Biology. So we gave lectures to undergraduate students of Korea University. Through this, we advertised iGEM and introduced our software program ‘Gil’. By letting them use our program, we made them grow their interest in the field and helped them realize how synthetic biology can be helpful in everyday life. Lastly, our ‘Gil’ demonstrated the purpose of scientific research.
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