Team:NAIT Edmonton/Outreach

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Community Outreach

Although this year is the first time our team is competing, we still tried to educate others on synthetic biology.

Science in Social Media

Tweets by @TeamNAIT2015

Social media is an excellent platform for the promotion and exposure of many different subjects. People use it to market themselves, their company, and even their projects

At the beginning of our iGEM journey, we decided to make a Twitter. At first, we didn't believe that we could get anyone to follow us but lo and behold, as of September 1st we had close to 250 followers! We believe that social media is an excellent tool for us to reach out and give the general public bits and digestible pieces of our technical project. Using social media, scientists and researchers can introduce their projects to the world while keeping it fun and interesting. Our Twitter is how we reached out to other iGEM teams in our network and how we communicated with our community.

Local High School Bio Labs

"If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it." -Margaret Fuller

Early on in our iGEM journey, we were approached by the Associate Chair of the Biological Sciences Technology program, Shannon Herbert, about assisting and teaching a Biology 30 class that would be visiting NAIT in a weeks’ time. The purpose of the class was to not only inform the students about opportunities at NAIT but to more importantly introduce them to Molecular Biology. Naturally we immediately said yes!

We then set to work in assisting Shannon with the preparations for the visit; lab rooms were cleaned, reagents were prepared and many plates were poured. We also added a fun activity for the students: we gave them the opportunity to express their creativity through bacterial art work! By introducing this fun activity, we hoped to encourage the young minds of tomorrow to see science as a discipline where you can not only learn but express yourself creatively.

Synthetic Biology at NAIT

Throughout the summer, our team has given a couple talks to NAIT's Office of Research and Innovation (ORnI). Our presentations were designed in such a way that the information is easily digestible for a variety of people of differing backgrounds - much like the general public.

Our presentations will be shown to students at NAIT after we return from the Giant Jamboree. By introducing students at NAIT to the idea of synthetic biology, highlighting our experiences at iGEM and offering mentorship in the future, we hope to create a synthetic biology community at our institution and possibly expand it to encompass all of Edmonton.