We visited the fire station to get more information about the fire extinguishing principles for our project, and we also learned that how terrible the fire disaster could be. The firefighters taught us that there is no possible to prevent all conflagrations, but we can make great effort to prevent or reduce the damage. During this workshop, we not only benefited from it for fire-related knowledge, but also came up with some ideas for our project. Hopefully, our project could let the public understand the fire and its dangerous behavior as well as make good application for fire security in the future.

During this summer, a special guest, Prof. David Westenberg visited us from Missouri University of Science & Technology, and  he is a co-advisor of Missouri-Rolla iGEM team. We introduced to him about our project and demonstrated our fire-burning experiments. We discussed with Prof. David about how we can further not only improve our project, but also outreach to the public. Afterwards, he told some stories about his school and his iGEM team'92s project, which we were all inspired by their creativity and its application. It was a unique and thought-provoking experience for both teams, and we looked forward to more interactions with other iGEMers.

This summer vacation, we attended to the iGEM Asia conference at NCTU in Taiwan. At first, we were really nervous because there were only three high school teams, while the others were all collegiate teams. However, we became more confident and prepared as we practiced our presentation repeatedly. We came across many amazing ideas and spent a lot of time discussing with other teams during the conference. The iGEM Asia Conference was not only a chance to make friends, but also an experience to share innovative ideas with people.

  At first, a group of Taichung students planned to bike around the countryside of Taiwan which is originally an entertaining trip. Then, we came up with an idea which is popularizing our project and hope to reinforce kids’ concept of bio-technique. More than that, this can also arouse their interest and creativity in this field.

  As we go along, we picked several elementary schools randomly and introduce ourselves and what we do to the kids. This is quite an impressive information to those children who have never heard of genetic modification, as a result, they found this attractive and meaningful in improving human’s life.

  Once they were told corn can be retransformed and genetcially modified, they came up with many interesting ideas such as shrinking the watermelon or combining some other fruits. This trip takes people in the countryside to reach the modern thought and technology.

Techology Month was held annually in Mingdao High School. During Biotech Week, we introduced our project and showed the students from grades 7 to 12 with some experiments we have learned in bio lab such as DNA gel electrophoresis and plasmid DNA extraction. Hoping that more people could understand synthetic biology and our project. Many students came to our lab, and we demonstrated them how to use the pipette and some lab awareness and skills. With excitement, students are enthusiastic to the experiments, and we have a great time together.

In recent years, GMO techniques are widely applied in society and GM foods are common to get in the supermarket. However, most of us are not sure whether GM foods are safe. Therefore, we held a forum to discuss the pros and cons on GM foods in school. We were debating whether the society continues or stops the GM foods. One group of students was the affirmative side, and the other was negative side. Both groups showed great debating ability. It was an impressive and fun experience. This forum may make the public aware of the biotech applied in the society.

On November 1st, 2014, we visited the Academic Sinica, which is one of the top academic institutes in Taiwan. We look around the display of research achievement from labs that inspires us how biotech could be. And we also attended academic symposium, in which we discussed specific topic and expressed our idea.  Meanwhile, we went to scientific research lectures, which intrigues our motivation to learn more biotech approaches in the lab.

By the way, we met Dr. Woan-Yuh Tarn in Institute of Biomedical Sciences.  We discussed our project and she is interested in our idea. We acquired the materials for gene cloning from her lab. This visit in Sinica has a significant meaning for us and is also the beginning on our iGEM tour.