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| | <table> | | <table> |
| | <tr id="casestudy"> | | <tr id="casestudy"> |
| − | <td><img class="team" src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/d/d3/IITDhp2.jpeg" height="200px" width="200px"></td> | + | <td><img class="team" src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/f/f4/Image_iitd.jpeg" height="200px" width="200px"></td> |
| | <td class="det"> | | <td class="det"> |
| | <h1 style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS', 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'Lucida Sans', Tahoma, sans-serif;color:white;font-size:250%;padding-top:18px;">CASE STUDY</h1> | | <h1 style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS', 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'Lucida Sans', Tahoma, sans-serif;color:white;font-size:250%;padding-top:18px;">CASE STUDY</h1> |
| | <h2 style="font-family: 'Roboto', sans-serif;color:white;font-size:150%;vertical-align:text-top;"> | | <h2 style="font-family: 'Roboto', sans-serif;color:white;font-size:150%;vertical-align:text-top;"> |
| | Case Study: | | Case Study: |
| | + | All through our project work a sociologist who is a doctoral candidate accompanied our team. A link to the short report prepared by him on teams' human practices component is given here. |
| | <br><br> | | <br><br> |
| − | As a sociologist and participant observer of iGEM project, my own objective had been to make sense
| + | <a href="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/c/c9/Igem_wiki_report_final.pdf">Click Here</a> |
| − | of knowledge building processes and inherent risk and uncertainty that goes along with it. It was a great
| + | |
| − | gesture that the iGEM IIT Delhi team invited and allowed me to literally follow each and every step in
| + | |
| − | the process – often tolerating my intrusion to their personal lives. Starting from the first orientation cum
| + | |
| − | recruitment session conducted in February for the student community of IIT Delhi, I have closely
| + | |
| − | followed the team till the time they shipped their BioBricks in September 2015.<br><br>
| + | |
| − | While orientation presentation was attended by more than 125 enthusiasts, around 80 students appeared
| + | |
| − | for the subsequent recruitment interviews. Team mentors shortlisted 42 students for subsequent training
| + | |
| − | and project work. It is to the credit of teams’ past experience that they could create clear division of
| + | |
| − | work though with flexible boundaries. The team initially functioned under different heads viz. lab,
| + | |
| − | marketing, marketing, creative, public relations. Over the period, as it goes with any voluntary activity,
| + | |
| − | final team now comprises of 22 members, including 4 MS/PhD mentors. All along these seven months
| + | |
| − | apart from observing team activities and documenting for my own PhD research, I contributed to team
| + | |
| − | effort by taking pictures, editing emails, reminding about planned activity, reviewing wiki pages, and
| + | |
| − | assisting in lab work like cleaning desk or moving around samples. One important aspect of my
| + | |
| − | participation, from the teams’ perspective was to help team brainstorm ideas on ‘human practices’
| + | |
| − | component of iGEM competition.<br><br>
| + | |
| − | It can be said that iGEM IIT Delhi team has clearly internalized broader objective of the competition
| + | |
| − | e.g. the email circulated to campus community for orientation session in February stated - “The theme
| + | |
| − | of the competition is to develop systems that harness the power of synthetic biology to solve pressing
| + | |
| − | modern day challenges”. The challenge which they chose is the issue of pollution – rather an obvious
| + | |
| − | issue, given the fact that Delhi is the world’s most polluted city. A great number of ideas were thrown
| + | |
| − | and discussed during the brainstorming sessions – often involving more than 30 participants. However
| + | |
| − | issues of safety, feasibility, cost, complexity, and relevance played a crucial role in identifying project.
| + | |
| − | During consultations with faculty members, ideas like swallowing modified EColi bacteria for detection
| + | |
| − | of peptic ulcer were put off due to concerns related to human health. Other ideas like a bacteria based
| + | |
| − | camera or piano too were judged as less relevant. Issue of pollution thus became a working theme, with
| + | |
| − | its potential to bring in positive change to everyday life.<br><br>
| + | |
| − | As a matter of responsible innovation, iGEM teams are expected to ‘go beyond the bench’ and pay close
| + | |
| − | attention to what is termed as ‘human practices’. According to iGEM website, "Human Practices is the
| + | |
| − | study of how your work affects the world, and how the world affects your work". As mentioned above,
| + | |
| − | this teams’ project originated in a deep concern for pollution and environment. Team started its first
| + | |
| − | dialogue with public as early as March 2015, by participating and showcasing their ideas at ‘Tryst’ (a
| + | |
| − | science and technology festival which draws huge participation of college students). This was followed
| + | |
| − | by exhibition of teams’ work in ‘Open House’, which is a public engagement event of IIT Delhi
| + | |
| − | showcasing achievements in research. During extensive brainstorming sessions several ideas were
| + | |
| − | generated and team needed to scrutinise these ideas in terms of risk, health, cost, and ethics along others.
| + | |
| − | A consultation with faculty members, allowed the team to understand nuances and potential effect of
| + | |
| − | their work. Team members also took time to mentor other teams in India, by sharing solutions to issues
| + | |
| − | they had faced in the past. Further, the team also interacted with other iGEM teams at a national meet
| + | |
| − | organised at Pune, sharing challenges faced by the team. Though one major reason to engage department
| + | |
| − | of biotechnology (DBT) was to bring in funds, it also in a way affected policy makers by making them
| + | |
| − | aware of the urgent needs of the student community who are working on novel technologies. Further,
| + | |
| − | engagement with public was pursued through series of interactions at a popular park in Delhi as well as
| + | |
| − | through education cum awareness camp for children in association with Aaina (a NGO). Making a
| + | |
| − | crowd funding video and putting an appeal to people on the world wide web also allowed the team an
| + | |
| − | opportunity to reflect why their work is relevant and what more they can do to responsibly innovate.
| + | |
| − | One important aspect team realised during this venture was, they aren’t addressing the carbon emission
| + | |
| − | problem. Briefly for two weeks this aspect too was discussed, but given the time constraint team
| + | |
| − | couldn’t pursue it further. Nevertheless that showed teams’ responsiveness to issues at hand. On two
| + | |
| − | separate occasions, team presented their work to newly joined undergraduate students, in part
| + | |
| − | motivating them to join teams’ efforts. A major collaboration is also underway with team ‘Enactus’ of
| + | |
| − | IIT Delhi, which is working on designing pollution free (indoor) stoves for rural population by using
| + | |
| − | inexpensive chimneys that release fumes to the outside air. The idea is to reduce the outdoor pollution
| + | |
| − | caused by stove fumes using iGEM teams’ bacteria culture. A site visit to a village and survey of
| + | |
| − | practical issues was carried out by the team in this regard. Further, team also managed to draw attention
| + | |
| − | of policy makers, by visiting Chief Minister of Delhi state. During the meet Chief Minister was
| + | |
| − | informed about the urgent need to tackle the issue of pollution, and how team is working on a potential
| + | |
| − | solution. Team also attempted interaction through other platforms apart from its Facebook page e.g. a
| + | |
| − | short byte for NDTV (a leading news channel) about the project. Some outreach efforts did not fructify
| + | |
| − | e.g. radio time, newspaper article. Overall though, iGEM IIT Delhi team has made tremendous amount
| + | |
| − | of efforts on the front of human practices, while as a matter of fact team had been struggling with
| + | |
| − | resources including human, monetary, infrastructure, and time. Social context has thus constantly
| + | |
| − | informed iGEM IIT Delhi teams’ work.
| + | |
| | </h2> | | </h2> |
| | <br /> | | <br /> |
