Difference between revisions of "Team:Minnesota/SMM"
Line 792: | Line 792: | ||
<br> | <br> | ||
<p> | <p> | ||
− | <i><u><font size="3">• | + | <i><u><font size="3">• Round Table Discussion with Industry</u></i> |
<br><br> | <br><br> | ||
− | | + | This summer we also met with over twenty R&D professionals at a local biotechnology company to discuss the motives and utility of our overall project. We hosted the meeting as a round table discussion in order to encourage open dialogue and collaboration around the central ideas of the project, and we found the conversations extremely valuable. As opposed to presenting information in a formal manner, we were able to talk openly about the viability of our 2A tag technology and how it would actually be structured in a professional R&D setting (assuming it had strong literature and characterization beforehand), such as the need to implement multiple approaches simultaneously to promote timely progress if one, or more, methods don’t come to fruition. |
+ | <br><br> | ||
+ | We also turned to critical conversations about how science is communicated to the public. Many professionals expressed the belief that education does not really make a difference in shaping public perception of advanced science topics, because many people simply don’t have personal investment in gaining expertise in those areas: the most important part is how the science will affect their daily lives. This is why the GMO scare is so tangible to non-scientists, because there is a very visceral reasoning coupled to the food that we consume every day. | ||
+ | <br><br> | ||
+ | In this vein, our conversation with the industry professionals ended up transcending our intentions for critically evaluating the design of our wetlab project and turning us on to broader ideas of engagement, communication, and collaboration both within the scientific community and the lay population. From here, we renewed focus on the tenets and limitations in the iGEM registry and pursued a deeper inquiry into the existing networks and missed connections therein. We also were encouraged to foster our voice on campus and engage students from all disciplines in general discussions about technological progress and the benefits and fears associated with that. In response, we hope to bolster the Synthetic Biology Society (founded by the 2013 Minnesota iGEM team) by reaching out to collaborate on events with other student groups and really implicate biotechnology in students’ considerations of the technological future and their own place within that progression. | ||
+ | |||
<br><br> | <br><br> | ||
<br> | <br> | ||
+ | <p> | ||
+ | <i><u><font size="3">• Collaborations</u></i> | ||
+ | <br><br> | ||
+ | As important as open source is, another theme that iGEM promotes is collaboration. We tried our best to help our fellow iGEM teams in whatever way we could. | ||
+ | <br><br>We were able to help mentor the very first Egyptian team with regards to Synthetic Biology, BioBricks, and their experimental design. | ||
+ | <br><br>We contributed a protocol for yeast homologous recombination for cloning for the Eindhoven team’s Cloning Guide for future iGEM teams' use. | ||
+ | <br><br>We also contributed surveys for the following iGEM teams: Aachen, Michigan Software, Nankai, NEFU_China, Paris-Saclay, Santa Clara, Seoul South Korea, and Stanford-Brown. | ||
<!---END--> | <!---END--> |
Revision as of 20:58, 18 September 2015