Difference between revisions of "Team:Hong Kong-CUHK/Practices"

 
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<h2> Policy & Practice</h2>
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We have planned and carried out many activities related to our projects and synthetic biology throughout this competition. The ultimate goal for our team of carrying out all these out-reach and other activities is to promote synthetic biology as well as this competition, iGEM, to the public.  
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Even though Hong Kong is one of the fastest growing city in the world. Also very well-known for being the “trade centre” for Asia. However, much of the development of this city only relates to aspects of economics. Unlike the United States, where there’s a fast growing economy as well as technology companies being well-developed. And their government is also aware of the importance of the development of technology. In Hong Kong, there has been much controversy on whether to establishing an Innovation and Technology Bureau. The chief executive of the Hong Kong government wished to establish this bureau to focus on the development of innovation and information technology. By that it includes technologies regarding renewable energy; waste management; as well as research and development in Chinese medicine. However, the legislative council have not yet approved the budget to develop this bureau. Therefore, there is still no end as to when science and technology can be better focused and to become more common among the general public in Hong Kong.
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The activities our team has held to promote our project and synthetic biology are as follows.
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1. Local questionnaire
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          In order to collect opinions from the public, we determined the best method to collect data massively is to distribute questionnaire to people with different backgrounds. We examined the respondents’ attitudes toward life science and synthetic biology for two months starting from early June this year. 206 responses were received. One discovery was that most of the respondents thought that synthetic biology is quite uncommon among the public. Not only does our data reflect this conclusion. But the immediate response we received from the people whom we have approached and invited to complete the questionnaire. Most people refused to participate, some due to not having the time, but many due to the disinterest of the topic. In some cases, we would even receive half finished forms as some people claimed that they seriously have no interest on synthetic biology, therefore they were not willing to spare the time to complete the questionnaire. These real life reactions, even though not shown on the data analysis for our questionnaire, but it reflects the uncommoness and indifferent of synthetic biology or even basic sciences in Hong Kong.
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As a result, we decided to hold the following activities in order to raise people’s awareness on synthetic biology. We tried to reach as many people in the general public as possible, through the social media, such as: Youtube; Facebook et cetera. However, for some of the activities, such as out-reach, we mainly focused on secondary school students and university students because they are the “new” generation, their actions can change the future of our society. Hence, enlightening them about synthetic biology could bring a bigger impact. Moreover, their educational background would also allow them to understand this topic more easily, therefore this would be more time efficient. Given that we only have limted time and resources.
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The following activites aim to raise people’s awareness on synthetic biology to address the problem of lacking appropriate promotion on synthetic biology.
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2. Video clips
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We were looking for an effective way to reach the attention of our target audience. And what better way than the use of short video clips to deliver the information which we wanted to promote? With the busy life style which most people now have, we needed a direct and convenient way. Apart from the easy access to watch video clips online, but links of video clips can also be easily shared. Therefore using videos to promote synthetic biology is a good way to increase people’s knowledge toward synthetic biology. We have made two video clips, the first one is to promote synthetic biology and our project; and the second one to promote the iGEM competition and introducing our team members.
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Video on promoting synthetic biology and our project
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As we have mentioned above, one of the age group we wanted to focus on is young people with an educational background. Hence, we have put this video on the channels which allow us to communicate with people of our target audience, which are Facebook and Youtube. This video simply consists of pictures full of drawings along with the narration to present synthetic biology and what our project is about to the audience. This is an excellent method to grasp people’s attention in a few minutes and people can gain a brief knowledge on synthetic biology in a relatively short time. Because the colourful drawings are eye-catching and make the message which we want to deliver more comprehensive. 
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Video on promoting iGEM and introducing our team members
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          Another video was produced aiming to promote iGEM in a more fun and interesting way. The reason behind this video was that we have realised not only does the general public lack the awareness of the existence of such a competition named iGEM. But even our friends and families who have higher education in the field of Science and Engineering. Therefore we chose the very well-known and popular Disney song among all ages - “Let it Go”, and changed the lyrics producing a parody called “Let it Clone”. The parody of the song “Let it go”,from the Disney movie “Frozen”, helps to highlight the friendly and fun “iGEM attitude”. With such a catchy song it is very easy to get the lyrics with the useful information into people’s heads. In addition, with this entertaining outlook, it would ignite people’s interest and let them want to find out more. The team members’ names as well as the names of instructors and professors are also shown in the last part of the video. Some members even sang and danced in the video aiming to gain more viewers from the public.
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3. Facebook page
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          We have also created a facebook page of our team in order to post latest news from our team, like videos, photos, et cetera. This is to attract people to pay more attention on our team and the iGEM competition. Through posting photos and comments, it helps to bring this competition closer to people. Because the more chance they are exposed to it, the less strange they feel towards this technology and it assists on bringing a friendly image of synthetic biology. The eye-catching icon on our facebook page was designed by one of our team members, which integrates our project with the iGEM 2015.
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4. Workshop
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          As our target group is the younger generation, we have invited secondary school students to attend a one-day workshop held by our iGEM team on the 4th of July. This workshop was called “A day as a scientist in CUHK”, targeting students of F.4-F.6 from various Hong Kong secondary schools. This workshop aims to benefit high school students by providing a platform for learning synthetic biology and a chance to work in a lab at University. Firstly, introduction and ice-breaking session were held in the morning. Secondly, the first lab session was provided for the students to experience the lab work like pipetting, making agrose gel, dye loading as well as performing gel electrophoresis.
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5. Talk
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          Aside from holding workshops, we have also provided a more formal talk targeting the secondary school students to provide basic knowledge over the background and advantages of synthetic biology. The talk did more than just inspired interest in synthetic biology, but it also encouraged students to think more about the impacts of synthetic biology. Helped them to understand the change synthetic biology can bring in fields such as environmental; energy; medical and to improve the quality of life. Most importantly, we also aid the students to consider the enthical aspects of sythetic biology, which is a controversal topic. Meanwhile, with the raise of interests on synthetic biology, it even paved the way for them to join iGEM in the future when they become university students. We have also introduced our project to them in which they found meaningful, and we were delighted to found many of them asking many questions regarding our project enthusiastically.
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6. Promotion to freshman
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          On our university’s - CUHK registration day on the 9th of August which is for freshmen to register for orientation camp and attend to information talks. Our team members grasped the chance to introduce iGEM and our project to the freshmen and many senior students. We were glad to have passed our enthusiasm towards iGEM to them, as many of the students we’ve reached showed much passion towards joining the team next year. As most of whom have only heard of synthetic biology for the first time, they were eager to find out more and excited about this competition. During the process, we have received many surprised comments, as most people felt so amazed that they could also have the chance to participate in such a competition and contribute to the development of synthetic biology.
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7. Asia conference at Taiwan
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          National Chiao Tung University had held an asia conference at Taiwan from the19th of July to the 22th of July, in which they have invited all the iGEM teams in Asia. Our team was honoured to have participated in this conference. We had a poster session to introduce the details of our project to other teams. Meanwhile, we also got this chance to listen to the presentation from the other teams and gained many great ideas from them.
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<h2><font face="Times New Roman" size="7pt"> Policy & Practice</h2></font>
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8. Exchange of ideas with other Asian team leaders
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<img src = "https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/a/a7/CUHK_Policy_and_Practice_Hong_Kong.jpg" width ="900px" height="300px" >
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Our team leader also got a great chance to interact and exchange ideas with other teams on the lab method and the promotion of synthetic biology et cetera. This was a precious opportunity to communicate with other Asian team leaders in which we can know the progress of other teams and their methods in doing lab. We also received some great criticisms which we consider seriously in order to improve our project. Through these interactive sessions, friendships were developed among us, and one of the other team's team leader even travelled all the way to Hong Kong to visit our lab.
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<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4pt">We have planned and carried out many activities related to synthetic biology and our projects throughout this competition. The ultimate goal for our team is to promote synthetic biology as well as this competition, iGEM, to the public. </p></font>
  
 
   
 
   
  
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<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4pt">The power of innovation and advance in technology have become one of the most important indicator of the development of a society. Even though Hong Kong is one of the fastest growing city in the world and very well-known as the “trade centre” of Asia, much of the development of this city relates to aspects of financial industry. In Hong Kong, innovation technology and scientific research attract much less public attention than financial industry and are frequently over-looked. In recent year, there has been much controversy on whether to establish an Innovation and Technology Bureau. Its establishment is believed to be able to facilitate and support the growth of innovation and information technology industry in Hong Kong which includes technologies related to renewable energy, waste management, as well as research and development in Chinese medicine. However, the legislative council have not yet approved the budget to develop this bureau due to many reasons. Therefore, there is still no end as to when science and technology can be better focused and to become more well-known and valued among the general public in Hong Kong. </p></font>
  
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Collaboration : iQuestionnaire; City University; UCSF iGEM team
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<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4pt">By conducting several surveys and activities, we hope to have a better understanding of current public opinion and attitude towards life sciences and particularly synthetic biology, and to raise certain awareness of the importance of supporting basic scientific research in local community.</p></font>
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<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4pt">The followings are high-lights of the activities conducted by our team to promote synthetic biology as well as our project.</p></font>
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    </td>
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<td style ="border: 0px">
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<h2><font face="Times New Roman" size="6pt">1. Local questionnaire</h2></font>
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<center><img src = "https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/9/96/CUHK_Policy_and_Practice_Local_questionnaire.jpg" height="200px" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0px">
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<p><a href="https://2015.igem.org/Team:Hong_Kong-CUHK/Questionnaire">Report of questionnaire</a></p>
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</center>
  
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9. International questionnaire
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<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4pt">In order to have a better understanding of the public opinion, we think the best method to collect data massively is to distribute questionnaire to people from different backgrounds. We examined the respondents’ attitudes toward life science and synthetic biology for two months starting from early June this year. Among total 206 responses were received, most of the respondents expresses that synthetic biology is quite uncommon among the public. Not only does our data reflect this conclusion, but the immediate response we received from the people whom we have approached and invited to complete the questionnaire. Most people refused to participate, some due to not having the time, but many due to the disinterest of the topic. In some cases, we would even receive half-finished forms as some people claimed that they seriously have no interest on synthetic biology, therefore they were reluctant to spare the time to complete the questionnaire. These real life reactions, even though not reflected on the data analysis, but it reflects the indifferences and ignorance toward synthetic biology or even basic sciences in Hong Kong. </p></font>
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CUHK was honoured to be in cooperation with 10 various different universities to conduct an international questionnaire on synthetic biology and on our respective projects. The universities which participated were Technische Universität Berlin, Beijing Institute of Technology, Universidade de São Paulo, Chang Gung University, University of Leicester, Université de Toulouse, TianjinUniversity, Kungliga Tekniska högskolan, Karolinska Institutet and University College London. Responses were collected from the location where the universities are located. This helped to collect opinions from around the world, not only confined to Hong Kong. We can distinguish the importance and acceptance of our project in a much larger scale of different places worldwide.  
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<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4pt">As a result, we decided to hold the following activities in order to raise people’s awareness on synthetic biology. We tried to reach as many people in the general public as possible, through the social media, such as YouTube and Facebook. On the other hand, for some of the activities, such as out-reach, we mainly focused on secondary school students and university students because they represent the “new” generation, whose actions can cause a bigger impact to the future of our society. Moreover, their educational background allows them to have a better understanding of the topic, which is much more efficient given limited time and resources we have. Detailed of the workshops can be found later in the report.</p></font>
  
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10. City University presentation and exchange of ideas with their team members and professors
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We have also had a chance to visit the City University of Hong Kong and communicated with their team members and professors during the visit. During the visit, we have reached an agreement on collaboration of which we would help them to do characterisation on the expression of the lacY gene. And they helped us to do a part of the modelling for the application part of our project. Furthermore, ideas were exchanged during further visits and lunch sessions and we gained precious opinions from them as well.
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11. UCSF iGEM Team wikiflicks
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<td style ="border: 0px">
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<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4pt">The following activities aim to raise people’s awareness on synthetic biology to address the problem of lacking appropriate promotion on synthetic biology.</p></font>
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For collaboration and to enable people worldwide to further understand synthetic biology and our project, we also worked with the UCSF iGEM Team. Which is a team that includes students from UC Berkeley; San Francisco State University; and recent graduates from Lincoln High School in San Francisco. Through this collaboration, we were able to present our videos on the UCSF iGEM Team’s wikiflicks. This enable us to spread the message to a much greater number of audience.
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<h2><font face="Times New Roman" size="6pt">2. Video clips </h2></font> 
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<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4pt">We were looking for an effective way to attract the attention of our target audience. And what’s the better way than the use of short video clips to deliver the information which we wanted to promote? With the busy life style which most people now have (especially in Hong Kong), we needed a direct and convenient way. Apart from the easy access to watch video clips online, links of video clips can also be easily shared. Therefore, using videos to promote synthetic biology is a good way to increase people’s knowledge toward synthetic biology. We have made two video clips; the first one is to promote synthetic biology and our project; and the second one to promote the iGEM competition and introducing our team members.</font></p>
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<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4pt"><u>Video on promoting synthetic biology and our project</u></font></p>
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<div class="photoContainer" style="width:250px; align: right; transform: translate(-40px, -20px);">
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<img src = "https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/8/88/CUHK_Policy_and_Practice_video_clips1.jpg" width ="300px" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 20px">
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<img src = "https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/0/04/CUHK_Policy_and_Practice_video_clips2.jpg" width ="300px" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 20px">
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsqDfD-8ex4" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 20px">CUHK iGEM 2015 Project Video</a>
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</div>
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<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4pt">As we have mentioned above, one of the age group we wanted to focus on is young people with an educational background. Hence, we have put this video on the channels which allow us to communicate with people of our target audience, which are Facebook and Youtube. This video simply consists of pictures full of drawings along with the narration to present synthetic biology and what our project is about to the audience. This is an excellent method to grasp people’s attention in a few minutes and people can gain a brief knowledge on synthetic biology in a relatively short time. Because the colourful drawings are eye-catching and make the message which we want to deliver more comprehensive. </font></p>
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<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4pt"><u>Video on promoting iGEM and introducing our team members</u></p></font>
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<div class="photoLeft">
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<div class="photoContainer" style="width:250px; align: left; transform: translate(-30px, 0px);">
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<img src = "https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/7/74/CUHK_Policy_and_Practice_video_clips3.jpg" width ="300px" style="margin:0px 10px 0px 0px">
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<img src = "https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/8/80/CUHK_Policy_and_Practice_video_clips4.jpg" width ="300px" style="margin:0px 10px 0px 0px">
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ch8mYyFWF4I" style="margin:0px 10px 0px 0px">CUHK iGEM 2015 Let it Clone</a>
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</div>
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<p style="padding-left: 320px"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4pt">Another video was produced aiming to promote iGEM in a more fun and interesting way. The reason behind this video was that we have realized not only does the general public lack the awareness of the existence of such a competition named iGEM, even our friends and families who have higher education in the field of Science and Engineering. Therefore, we chose the very well-known and popular Disney song among all ages - “Let it Go”, and changed the lyrics producing a parody called “Let it Clone”. The parody of the song “Let it go”, from the Disney movie “Frozen”, helps to highlight the friendly and fun “iGEM attitude”. With such a catchy song it is very easy to get the lyrics with the useful information into people’s heads. In addition, with this entertaining outlook, it would ignite people’s interest and curiosity toward iGEM. The names of all team members, instructors and professors are also shown in the last part of the video. Some members even sang and danced in the video aiming to gain more viewers from the public.
  
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</tr>
  
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    12. Interview with Professor Douglas Yung
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  Link: <td><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ch8mYyFWF4I">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ch8mYyFWF4I</a></td> </font></p>
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          To gain a better understanding on microbial fuel cells, which is one of the applications of our project. We had an interview with Prof. Douglas Yung. He is a CUHK assistant professor under the department of electronic engineering. Prof. Yung has achieved a Ph.D. in Bioengineering from Caltech in 2008 and worked in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California as a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow focused on the sensor development microfluidics as well as bacterial spore viability. One of his current research interests is microbial fuel cell. Microbial fuel cell is closely related to our project, it is one of the three applications of our project. We gained lots of knowledge from Prof. Yung on microbial fuel cell and asked for his advice on our project in which we regarded this as a valuable chance to review our project.
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<h2><font face="Times New Roman" size="6pt">3. Facebook page</h2></font>
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<img src = "https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/e/e8/CUHK_Policy_and_Practice_Facebook_page.jpg" width ="400px" style="margin:-40px 0px 0px 20px" align="right">
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<!--<a href="https://www.facebook.com/iGEM2015CUHK?fref=ts">IGEM 2015 CUHK Team</a>-->
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<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4pt">We have also created a Facebook page of our team in order to post latest news from our team, like videos, photos, et cetera. This is to attract people to pay more attention on our team and the iGEM competition. Through posting photos and comments, it helps to bring this competition closer to people. Because the more chance they are exposed to it, the less strange they feel towards this technology and it assists on bringing a friendly image of synthetic biology. The eye-catching icon on our Facebook page was designed by one of our team members, which integrates our project with the iGEM 2015. </p></font>
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<h2><font face="Times New Roman" size="6pt">4. Workshop </h2></font>
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<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4pt">As our target group is the younger generation, we have invited secondary school students to attend a one-day workshop held by our iGEM team on the 4th of July. This workshop was called “A day as a scientist in CUHK”, targeting students of F.4-F.6 from various Hong Kong secondary schools. This workshop aims to benefit high school students by providing a platform for learning synthetic biology and a chance to work in a lab at university. Firstly, introduction and ice-breaking session were held in the morning. Secondly, the first lab session was provided for the students to experience the lab work like pipetting, making agarose gel, dye loading as well as performing gel electrophoresis. </p></font>
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<div class="photoContainer" style="width: 800px; height: 135px; align:center;transform: translate(-25px, 0px);">
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<img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/b/b7/CUHK_Workshop_1.JPG" width="200px" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0px" align="left">
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<img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/a/af/CUHK_Workshop_2.JPG" width="200px" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0px" align="left">
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<img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/1/14/CUHK_Workshop_3.JPG" width="200px" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0px" align="left">
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<img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/e/ee/CUHK_Workshop_6.JPG" height="100px" style="transform: translate(-30px, 0px);margin:0px 0px 0px 0px" align="left"></div>
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<img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/0/0b/CUHK_Workshop_7.JPG" height="100px" style="transform: translate(-30px, 0px);margin:0px 0px 0px 0px" align="left"></div>
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<img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/4/43/CUHK_Workshop_9.JPG" height="134px" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0px" align="left">
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<h2><font face="Times New Roman" size="6pt">5. Talk </h2></font>
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<img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/a/ad/CUHK_Workshop_8.JPG" width ="350px" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0px" align="right">
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<p style="padding-right: 360px"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4pt">Aside from holding workshops, we have also provided a more formal talk targeting the secondary school students to provide basic knowledge over the background and advantages of synthetic biology. The talk did more than just inspired interest in synthetic biology, but it also encouraged students to think more about the impacts of synthetic biology. We hope the talk could help them to think and understand the change synthetic biology can make in environment preservation, novel energy sources, medicine, and as a whole, improving the quality of life. Most importantly, we also encourage students to consider the ethical aspects of synthetic biology, which is a controversial issue and probably the major reason people hold a skeptical view toward synthetic biology. Meanwhile, with the raise of interests on synthetic biology, it even paved the way for them to join iGEM in the future when they become university students. We have also introduced our project to them in which they found meaningful, and we were delighted to found many of them asking thoughtful questions regarding our project enthusiastically. </p></font>
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Linkage with our Project:  
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<h2><font face="Times New Roman" size="6pt">6. Promotion to freshmen</h2></font>
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<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4pt"> On our university’s - CUHK registration day on the 9th of August, which is when freshmen registered for orientation camps and attend to information talks. Our team members grasped the chance to introduce synthetic biology and our project to them and many other senior students. We were glad to have passed our enthusiasm towards iGEM to them, as many of the students we’ve reached showed much passion towards joining the team next year. As most of whom have only heard of synthetic biology for the first time, they were eager to find out more and excited about this competition. During the process, we have received many surprised comments, as most people felt so amazed that they could also have the chance to participate in such a competition and contribute to the development of synthetic biology. </p></font>
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The three main applications of our magnetosome project which we focused on are: protein extraction; water treatment; and microbial fuel cell. Protein extraction may be tended to be tilted to research instead of application, however, we believe that this kind of research should promote more to the public enabling people’s interest on doing further research rather than just an application. As we have said before, Hong Kong is a place without much attention on supporting research of the development of science and technology. Protein extraction can be one of the research areas in which the government can give support because it is beneficial to the society. As the prevalence of synthetic biology is low in Hong Kong so we hope the above mentioned practices can raise the awareness of the society on synthetic biology.
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<h2><font face="Times New Roman" size="6pt">7. Asia conference at Taiwan </h2></font>
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<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4pt">National Chiao Tung University had held an Asia conference at Taiwan during 19-22, July, in which they have invited all the iGEM teams in Asia. Our team was honored to participate in this conference. We had a poster session to introduce the details of our project to other teams. Meanwhile, we also got this chance to listen to the presentation from the other teams and gained many great ideas from them. </p></font>
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<h2><font face="Times New Roman" size="6pt">8. Exchange of ideas with other Asian team leaders </h2></font>
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<p style="padding-right: 210px"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4pt">Our team leader also got a great chance to interact and exchange ideas with other teams on the lab method and the promotion of synthetic biology. This was a precious opportunity which we can know the progress of other teams and their methods in doing lab. We also received some great suggestion which we consider seriously in order to improve our project. Through these interactive sessions, friendships were developed among us, and one of the other team's team leader even travelled all the way to Hong Kong to visit our lab.</p></font>
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<h2><font face="Times New Roman" size="6pt">9. International questionnaire</h2></font>
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<p><a href="https://2015.igem.org/Team:Hong_Kong-CUHK/iQuestionnaire">Report of International questionnaire</a></p>
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<p style="padding-left:410px"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4pt">CUHK was honoured to be in cooperation with 10 various different universities to conduct an international questionnaire on synthetic biology and on our respective projects. The universities which participated were Technische Universität Berlin, Beijing Institute of Technology, Universidade de São Paulo, Chang Gung University, University of Leicester, Université de Toulouse, Tianjin University, Kungliga Tekniska högskolan, Karolinska Institutet and University College London. Responses were collected from the location where the universities are located. This helped to collect opinions from around the world, not only confined to Hong Kong. We can distinguish the importance and acceptance of our project in a much larger scale of different places worldwide. </p></font>
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<h2><font face="Times New Roman" size="6pt">10. City University presentation and exchange of ideas with their team members and professors </h2></font>
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<p style="padding-right: 210px"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4pt">We have also had a chance to visit the City University of Hong Kong and communicated with their team members and professors. During the visit, we have reached an agreement on collaboration of which we would help them to do characterization on the expression of the lacY gene. And they offered to help us with part of the modeling of our project. </p></font>
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<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4pt">We have gained informative and constructive advice from this visit. </p></font>
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<h2><font face="Times New Roman" size="6pt">11.  UCSF iGEM Team wikiflicks</h2></font>
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<p style="padding-left: 210px"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4pt">To enable people worldwide to further understand synthetic biology and our project, we also collaborated with the UCSF iGEM Team, which composed of students from UC Berkeley, San Francisco State University, and recent graduates from Lincoln High School in San Francisco. Through this collaboration, we were able to present our videos on the UCSF iGEM Team’s wikiflicks. This enables us to spread the message to a much greater number of audiences.</p></font>
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<h2><font face="Times New Roman" size="6pt">12. Interview with Professor Douglas Yung </h2></font>
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<h4> Purpose: </h4>
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<p>We have made the questionnaire in early June and we collected the data for around two months. The purpose of doing questionnaire is to collect the opinion of the public about life science, synthetic biology and our project. And the questionnaire is answered by people from different ages, not only secondary school students and universities students. People are also from different educational background as we want to observe the attitude of people towards synthetic biology and our project. The samples are collected in Hong Kong because the acknowledgement of synthetic biology is important to local policies about science in Hong Kong.</b> </p>
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<p style="padding-right: 280px"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4pt">To better understand microbial fuel cells, which is one of the applications of our project. We had an interview with Prof. Douglas Yung. He is an assistant professor of the department of electronic engineering, CUHK. Prof. Yung acquired his Ph.D. in Bioengineering from Caltech in 2008 and worked in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California as a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow focused on the sensor development microfluidics as well as bacterial spore viability. One of his current research interests is microbial fuel cell. Prof. Yung has provided us many valuable insights of microbial fuel cell and how to adapt this concept to real-life application. Microbial fuel cell is closely related to our project, it is one of the three applications of our project. We gained lots of knowledge from Prof. Yung on microbial fuel cell and asked for his advice on our project in which we regarded this as a valuable chance to review our project.</p></font>
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<h4> Method: </h4>
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<p> The method we used to distribute the questionnaire is online-distribution. We got 206 responses. 143 of them are female and 63 of them are male. The groups of people that we want to focus are the ages of the sample. The first group is aging from 16 years old to 20 years old; second group is from 21 years old to 30 years old; third group is from 31 years old to 40 years old and the last group is those 41 years old or above. People aging 16 years old to 30 years old are mainly secondary school students and universities students studying biology-related courses. </p>
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<h4> Result: </h4>
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<p> There are 145 people prefer our project 1(ABCDE) more and 61 people prefer our project 2(MNOPQ) more, which means people concern the environment and greenhouse gases more.</p>
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<p>In question 8, we can see that life science brings positive influence to the aspect of medicine and health(an average score of 4.888) most while it brings least influence to economy(an average score of 4). This is based on the result of the calculated average score of each aspect. Actually, all aspects have a score of at least 4.</p>
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<p>In question 9, over four-fifth of the participants find that life science brings significant impact to their personal life. The mean score is 4.41(full score is 6), which indicates that life science is quite significant to daily life.</p>
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<p>For question 10, nine out of ten of the participants think that life science is beneficial and important to human beings. This is based on the mean score of 4.7(full score is 6), which shows that a large portion of people think it is beneficial and important.</p>
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<p>From these three questions, life science is important to the daily life and mainly in medicine and health aspect. There can be a further interview that ask about how life science affect their life and affect different aspects. Thus, we can gain more information of the public about life science, which is useful for promoting life science in the community. </p>
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<p>In question 12, as we expected, synthetic biology is not common. The average score is just 2.74 (full score is 6), which means synthetic biology is not commonly known.</p>
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<p>From question 13, more than seven out of ten of the participants rated a score of 3 or above in the aspects of useful and important and more than half of the participants rated a score of 3 or below in the aspects of safe and ethical. Although synthetic biology is useful and important, it is not safe and ethical and thus, people may oppose to synthetic biology when synthetic biology become more popular in the society. In order to make people feeling more positive towards synthetic biology, education and promotion may help.From Questions 14, around 70% of people are willing to learn more about synthetic biology mainly because synthetic biology can alleviate medical problems, which is same as Q18’s result. Two-third of these participants would like to learn synthetic biology through social media and workshop. Thus, promoting synthetic biology and alleviating the public’s concerns on synthetic biology through workshops and social media seems to be useful.However, around three out of ten participants are not willing to learn synthetic biology mainly because they are not interested in synthetic biology. Therefore, it is important to raise their awareness on synthetic biology by promoting it as an interesting or important issue and thus, they may pay more attention on synthetic biology and be more willing to learn it. In addition, more people will know about synthetic biology in more details and with fewer doubts.</p>
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<p>In question 18, we can see that synthetic biology brings positive influence to the aspect of medicine and health (an average score of 4.369) most while it brings least influence to energy resources(an average score of 3.132). This is based on the result of the calculated average score of each aspect. And the aspect of medicine and health is closely related to our project. Participants find that both synthetic biology and life science can bring the great positive influence to medicine and health, it may due to the news always focus on the contributions of life science and synthetic biology on medicine and health but it seldom focus on other aspects. There would be more promotions and information focusing on the positive influences of life science and synthetic biology on environment, energy resources, agriculture and economy. Thus, the public can have a better overviews about both the life science and synthetic biology.</P>
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<p>In question 19 and 20, around 70% people prefer project 1 more, while the other 30% chooses project 2. Their main reason for choosing the project is the significance of our projects on the society, such as the lead water problem, water pollution, air pollution, etc. and the efficiency of filtering of heavy metal.</p>
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<p>In question 13, we asked about the effect on ethical aspect, the score is the lowest (average score of 3.238) and some of the participants would not like to learn synthetic biology because they think synthetic biology is “playing god”. This may be because of participants with religion who do not like synthetic biology much. There could be a further investigation about how religion is correlated to the feelings on synthetic biology. If there are any misunderstandings, the problem could be solved by explanation and thus, synthetic biology can be better accepted.</p>
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<h3> Discussion: </h3>
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<h4> Correlation of participants from different background to the data: </h4>
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<h5> Distribution of ages: </h5>
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<p> 115 participants are 16-20 years old, 48 participants are 21-30, 27 participants are 31-40, 16 participants are 41 years old or above. </p>
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<h5> Correlation of ages: </h5>
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<p> The younger the participants, the more likely they think both life science and synthetic biology synthetic biology have a positive impact to the environment, energy resources, agricultural, medicine and health and economy. Also, they will find synthetic biology is more popular, ethical, important and safer. The perception of the participants may due to their educational background. Since life science and synthetic biology are maturing, nowadays students can encounter more knowledge of life science and synthetic biology during their studying and thus, they may be more confident with the life science and synthetic biology.</p>
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<p>Thus, educating the public of life science and synthetic biology is mandatory to alleviate their negative feeling towards the life science and synthetic biology. The promotion method can be mainly the workshops and make use of the social media because these two methods are the most popular choices in Q16. </p>
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<p> However, the middle-aged people (31-40) rate the lowest score, at least 0.4 lower than the overall average score, for the positive impacts of life science in all the aspects (environment, energy resources, agriculture, medicine and health, economy, personal life and social benefits). There would be a further research on why they will have these perceptions to life science but not the synthetic biology.</p>
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<p> All groups of participants think that life science benefits the aspect of medicine and health most, which is same as the overall result. Participants of 16-20 think life science has a relative strong impact to the environment, comparing to other groups, because the average score is 4.7/6, which is at least 0.5 higher than that of other groups’ average score. It may also due to the educational background.</p>
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<p> All groups rate the positive impacts of life science in all aspects with a higher score than that of synthetic biology, except the 16-20 groups rate the positive impacts of synthetic biology in economy with a 0.1 higher than that of life science. It may due to the popularity of life science because the public get the information of life science easier and they know more of life science’s advantages. </p>
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<h4> Distribution of educational background: </h4>
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<p> 65 of the participants are F.7 or below, 141 of the participants are undergraduate or above.</p>
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<h4> Correlation of educational background: </h4>
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<p> Both participants have the educational background of F.7 or below and undergraduate or above show a similar pattern on the view of life science and synthetic biology. However, the greatest differences were shown in popularity and ethics of synthetic biology. Participants of F.7 or below think that the popularity of synthetic biology is higher than how participants of undergraduate or above think. It may due to their differences in the definition of the term popular. Undergraduates may find a few opportunities to work in synthetic biology field in Hong Kong and thus, it is not so popular while other group may find it popular when they heard about the synthetic biology.  
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While participants of undergraduate or above think that synthetic biology is more ethic than how participants of F.7 or below think. It may due to the result of differences in knowledge of synthetic biology.</p>
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<h4> Distribution of biology educational background: </h4>
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<p> 68 of the participants are F.5 or below, 94 of the participants are HKCEE or above and 44 of the participants are undergraduate or above (only those who study life science related major are considered as undergraduate or above in biology level). </p>
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<h4> Correlation of biology educational background: </h4>
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<p> In the opinions toward life science, a similar pattern is shown that participants of F.5 or below give the lowest score, those HKCEE or above give the medium score when compared to other two groups and the participants of undergraduate or above give the highest score in all aspects of environment, energy resources, agriculture, medicine and health, economy, personal life impact and social benefits. A similar pattern is also shown in the views of popularity, safety, ethics, importance and usefulness in synthetic biology. However, the pattern changes in other aspects concerning synthetic biology. Participants of HKCEE or above give the highest score, participants of F.5 or below give the lowest score and those undergraduate or above give the medium score to the aspects of environment, energy resources, agriculture, medicine and health and economy of synthetic biology. And the overall score of synthetic biology is lower than that of life science. It may because the participants of undergraduate or above acknowledge synthetic biology in a more detailed way in their study, comparing to participants of HKCEE or above. Gaining more knowledge about both the positive and negative sides of synthetic biology can help them to make a different conclusion.
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The score of the positive impact of the 5 areas of life science are higher than that of synthetic biology in all of the 3 groups, except the 16-20 groups rate the positive impacts of synthetic biology in economy with a 0.16 higher than that of life science. This is similar to the result of the age groups. </h4>
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<p> Synthetic biology is not so common in view of the public, this may due to various reasons. For those who are educated less may think that it is not very safe to develop and those who are more educated may think of a higher level of problem, which is the ethic problem. More promotion and education is needed to make people acknowledge more. </b> </p>
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<h2> Human Practices </h2>
 
<h2> Human Practices </h2>

Latest revision as of 00:14, 12 October 2015

Policy & Practice

We have planned and carried out many activities related to synthetic biology and our projects throughout this competition. The ultimate goal for our team is to promote synthetic biology as well as this competition, iGEM, to the public.

The power of innovation and advance in technology have become one of the most important indicator of the development of a society. Even though Hong Kong is one of the fastest growing city in the world and very well-known as the “trade centre” of Asia, much of the development of this city relates to aspects of financial industry. In Hong Kong, innovation technology and scientific research attract much less public attention than financial industry and are frequently over-looked. In recent year, there has been much controversy on whether to establish an Innovation and Technology Bureau. Its establishment is believed to be able to facilitate and support the growth of innovation and information technology industry in Hong Kong which includes technologies related to renewable energy, waste management, as well as research and development in Chinese medicine. However, the legislative council have not yet approved the budget to develop this bureau due to many reasons. Therefore, there is still no end as to when science and technology can be better focused and to become more well-known and valued among the general public in Hong Kong.

By conducting several surveys and activities, we hope to have a better understanding of current public opinion and attitude towards life sciences and particularly synthetic biology, and to raise certain awareness of the importance of supporting basic scientific research in local community.

The followings are high-lights of the activities conducted by our team to promote synthetic biology as well as our project.

1. Local questionnaire

Report of questionnaire

In order to have a better understanding of the public opinion, we think the best method to collect data massively is to distribute questionnaire to people from different backgrounds. We examined the respondents’ attitudes toward life science and synthetic biology for two months starting from early June this year. Among total 206 responses were received, most of the respondents expresses that synthetic biology is quite uncommon among the public. Not only does our data reflect this conclusion, but the immediate response we received from the people whom we have approached and invited to complete the questionnaire. Most people refused to participate, some due to not having the time, but many due to the disinterest of the topic. In some cases, we would even receive half-finished forms as some people claimed that they seriously have no interest on synthetic biology, therefore they were reluctant to spare the time to complete the questionnaire. These real life reactions, even though not reflected on the data analysis, but it reflects the indifferences and ignorance toward synthetic biology or even basic sciences in Hong Kong.

As a result, we decided to hold the following activities in order to raise people’s awareness on synthetic biology. We tried to reach as many people in the general public as possible, through the social media, such as YouTube and Facebook. On the other hand, for some of the activities, such as out-reach, we mainly focused on secondary school students and university students because they represent the “new” generation, whose actions can cause a bigger impact to the future of our society. Moreover, their educational background allows them to have a better understanding of the topic, which is much more efficient given limited time and resources we have. Detailed of the workshops can be found later in the report.

The following activities aim to raise people’s awareness on synthetic biology to address the problem of lacking appropriate promotion on synthetic biology.

2. Video clips

We were looking for an effective way to attract the attention of our target audience. And what’s the better way than the use of short video clips to deliver the information which we wanted to promote? With the busy life style which most people now have (especially in Hong Kong), we needed a direct and convenient way. Apart from the easy access to watch video clips online, links of video clips can also be easily shared. Therefore, using videos to promote synthetic biology is a good way to increase people’s knowledge toward synthetic biology. We have made two video clips; the first one is to promote synthetic biology and our project; and the second one to promote the iGEM competition and introducing our team members.

Video on promoting synthetic biology and our project

CUHK iGEM 2015 Project Video

As we have mentioned above, one of the age group we wanted to focus on is young people with an educational background. Hence, we have put this video on the channels which allow us to communicate with people of our target audience, which are Facebook and Youtube. This video simply consists of pictures full of drawings along with the narration to present synthetic biology and what our project is about to the audience. This is an excellent method to grasp people’s attention in a few minutes and people can gain a brief knowledge on synthetic biology in a relatively short time. Because the colourful drawings are eye-catching and make the message which we want to deliver more comprehensive.

Video on promoting iGEM and introducing our team members

CUHK iGEM 2015 Let it Clone

Another video was produced aiming to promote iGEM in a more fun and interesting way. The reason behind this video was that we have realized not only does the general public lack the awareness of the existence of such a competition named iGEM, even our friends and families who have higher education in the field of Science and Engineering. Therefore, we chose the very well-known and popular Disney song among all ages - “Let it Go”, and changed the lyrics producing a parody called “Let it Clone”. The parody of the song “Let it go”, from the Disney movie “Frozen”, helps to highlight the friendly and fun “iGEM attitude”. With such a catchy song it is very easy to get the lyrics with the useful information into people’s heads. In addition, with this entertaining outlook, it would ignite people’s interest and curiosity toward iGEM. The names of all team members, instructors and professors are also shown in the last part of the video. Some members even sang and danced in the video aiming to gain more viewers from the public. Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ch8mYyFWF4I

3. Facebook page

We have also created a Facebook page of our team in order to post latest news from our team, like videos, photos, et cetera. This is to attract people to pay more attention on our team and the iGEM competition. Through posting photos and comments, it helps to bring this competition closer to people. Because the more chance they are exposed to it, the less strange they feel towards this technology and it assists on bringing a friendly image of synthetic biology. The eye-catching icon on our Facebook page was designed by one of our team members, which integrates our project with the iGEM 2015.

4. Workshop

As our target group is the younger generation, we have invited secondary school students to attend a one-day workshop held by our iGEM team on the 4th of July. This workshop was called “A day as a scientist in CUHK”, targeting students of F.4-F.6 from various Hong Kong secondary schools. This workshop aims to benefit high school students by providing a platform for learning synthetic biology and a chance to work in a lab at university. Firstly, introduction and ice-breaking session were held in the morning. Secondly, the first lab session was provided for the students to experience the lab work like pipetting, making agarose gel, dye loading as well as performing gel electrophoresis.

5. Talk

Aside from holding workshops, we have also provided a more formal talk targeting the secondary school students to provide basic knowledge over the background and advantages of synthetic biology. The talk did more than just inspired interest in synthetic biology, but it also encouraged students to think more about the impacts of synthetic biology. We hope the talk could help them to think and understand the change synthetic biology can make in environment preservation, novel energy sources, medicine, and as a whole, improving the quality of life. Most importantly, we also encourage students to consider the ethical aspects of synthetic biology, which is a controversial issue and probably the major reason people hold a skeptical view toward synthetic biology. Meanwhile, with the raise of interests on synthetic biology, it even paved the way for them to join iGEM in the future when they become university students. We have also introduced our project to them in which they found meaningful, and we were delighted to found many of them asking thoughtful questions regarding our project enthusiastically.

6. Promotion to freshmen

On our university’s - CUHK registration day on the 9th of August, which is when freshmen registered for orientation camps and attend to information talks. Our team members grasped the chance to introduce synthetic biology and our project to them and many other senior students. We were glad to have passed our enthusiasm towards iGEM to them, as many of the students we’ve reached showed much passion towards joining the team next year. As most of whom have only heard of synthetic biology for the first time, they were eager to find out more and excited about this competition. During the process, we have received many surprised comments, as most people felt so amazed that they could also have the chance to participate in such a competition and contribute to the development of synthetic biology.

7. Asia conference at Taiwan

National Chiao Tung University had held an Asia conference at Taiwan during 19-22, July, in which they have invited all the iGEM teams in Asia. Our team was honored to participate in this conference. We had a poster session to introduce the details of our project to other teams. Meanwhile, we also got this chance to listen to the presentation from the other teams and gained many great ideas from them.

8. Exchange of ideas with other Asian team leaders

Our team leader also got a great chance to interact and exchange ideas with other teams on the lab method and the promotion of synthetic biology. This was a precious opportunity which we can know the progress of other teams and their methods in doing lab. We also received some great suggestion which we consider seriously in order to improve our project. Through these interactive sessions, friendships were developed among us, and one of the other team's team leader even travelled all the way to Hong Kong to visit our lab.

9. International questionnaire

Report of International questionnaire

CUHK was honoured to be in cooperation with 10 various different universities to conduct an international questionnaire on synthetic biology and on our respective projects. The universities which participated were Technische Universität Berlin, Beijing Institute of Technology, Universidade de São Paulo, Chang Gung University, University of Leicester, Université de Toulouse, Tianjin University, Kungliga Tekniska högskolan, Karolinska Institutet and University College London. Responses were collected from the location where the universities are located. This helped to collect opinions from around the world, not only confined to Hong Kong. We can distinguish the importance and acceptance of our project in a much larger scale of different places worldwide.

10. City University presentation and exchange of ideas with their team members and professors

We have also had a chance to visit the City University of Hong Kong and communicated with their team members and professors. During the visit, we have reached an agreement on collaboration of which we would help them to do characterization on the expression of the lacY gene. And they offered to help us with part of the modeling of our project.

We have gained informative and constructive advice from this visit.

11. UCSF iGEM Team wikiflicks

To enable people worldwide to further understand synthetic biology and our project, we also collaborated with the UCSF iGEM Team, which composed of students from UC Berkeley, San Francisco State University, and recent graduates from Lincoln High School in San Francisco. Through this collaboration, we were able to present our videos on the UCSF iGEM Team’s wikiflicks. This enables us to spread the message to a much greater number of audiences.

12. Interview with Professor Douglas Yung

To better understand microbial fuel cells, which is one of the applications of our project. We had an interview with Prof. Douglas Yung. He is an assistant professor of the department of electronic engineering, CUHK. Prof. Yung acquired his Ph.D. in Bioengineering from Caltech in 2008 and worked in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California as a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow focused on the sensor development microfluidics as well as bacterial spore viability. One of his current research interests is microbial fuel cell. Prof. Yung has provided us many valuable insights of microbial fuel cell and how to adapt this concept to real-life application. Microbial fuel cell is closely related to our project, it is one of the three applications of our project. We gained lots of knowledge from Prof. Yung on microbial fuel cell and asked for his advice on our project in which we regarded this as a valuable chance to review our project.