Difference between revisions of "Team:BostonU/Education/Building with Biology"
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<h3>Building with Biology</h3> | <h3>Building with Biology</h3> | ||
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<p>We also recognized that while our research was foundational and not immediately ready for any particular applications, it was still important to consider downstream uses and to engage in constructive dialogue with the public. Following our collaborations with the Wellesley museum exhibit project, we are able to experience a fully functioning syn bio museum exhibit! One of our biggest impacts in the community this summer was at the museum education opportunity called "Building with Biology", hosted by the Museum of Science here in Boston. This was a pilot event held at 8 museums across the country to disseminate information and engage museum goers in syn bio.</p> | <p>We also recognized that while our research was foundational and not immediately ready for any particular applications, it was still important to consider downstream uses and to engage in constructive dialogue with the public. Following our collaborations with the Wellesley museum exhibit project, we are able to experience a fully functioning syn bio museum exhibit! One of our biggest impacts in the community this summer was at the museum education opportunity called "Building with Biology", hosted by the Museum of Science here in Boston. This was a pilot event held at 8 museums across the country to disseminate information and engage museum goers in syn bio.</p> | ||
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<p style="padding-bottom:60px;">We worked closely with museum coordinators, local research scientists, and even the Wellesley and MIT iGEM teams to lead activities that would spark public discussion. These discussions revolved around either big ideas in synthetic biology or what a researcher does on a regular basis like creating different types of vaccines using recombination techniques, creating a super bacteria by combining genes, or showing routine techniques such as plating cells. However, even before that, it was our job to introduce synthetic biology and address the misconceptions, questions, and comments museum-goers had. We were stunned and impressed with the knowledge and curiosity that the children expressed. So many could understand syn bio when it was compared to something else in the activities, such as cutting and pasting for putting genes from one bacteria into another. Many events asked museum-goers to think about the ethics of syn bio and not only did the children come up with some interesting arguments, but the parents were interested as well. Over the discussion some of those initial ideas would change, which is really all we can hope for when talking about such controversial topics. One of the most unique opportunities we had was to sit in a roundtable discussion with members of the public and debate cutting edge technologies, such as engineering the genomes of mosquitos and opening a community lab (which some teams could possibly benefit from to do mammalian research!)</p> | <p style="padding-bottom:60px;">We worked closely with museum coordinators, local research scientists, and even the Wellesley and MIT iGEM teams to lead activities that would spark public discussion. These discussions revolved around either big ideas in synthetic biology or what a researcher does on a regular basis like creating different types of vaccines using recombination techniques, creating a super bacteria by combining genes, or showing routine techniques such as plating cells. However, even before that, it was our job to introduce synthetic biology and address the misconceptions, questions, and comments museum-goers had. We were stunned and impressed with the knowledge and curiosity that the children expressed. So many could understand syn bio when it was compared to something else in the activities, such as cutting and pasting for putting genes from one bacteria into another. Many events asked museum-goers to think about the ethics of syn bio and not only did the children come up with some interesting arguments, but the parents were interested as well. Over the discussion some of those initial ideas would change, which is really all we can hope for when talking about such controversial topics. One of the most unique opportunities we had was to sit in a roundtable discussion with members of the public and debate cutting edge technologies, such as engineering the genomes of mosquitos and opening a community lab (which some teams could possibly benefit from to do mammalian research!)</p> | ||
Revision as of 21:07, 18 September 2015
| Building with Biology | Upward Bound |
Building with Biology
We also recognized that while our research was foundational and not immediately ready for any particular applications, it was still important to consider downstream uses and to engage in constructive dialogue with the public. Following our collaborations with the Wellesley museum exhibit project, we are able to experience a fully functioning syn bio museum exhibit! One of our biggest impacts in the community this summer was at the museum education opportunity called "Building with Biology", hosted by the Museum of Science here in Boston. This was a pilot event held at 8 museums across the country to disseminate information and engage museum goers in syn bio.
We worked closely with museum coordinators, local research scientists, and even the Wellesley and MIT iGEM teams to lead activities that would spark public discussion. These discussions revolved around either big ideas in synthetic biology or what a researcher does on a regular basis like creating different types of vaccines using recombination techniques, creating a super bacteria by combining genes, or showing routine techniques such as plating cells. However, even before that, it was our job to introduce synthetic biology and address the misconceptions, questions, and comments museum-goers had. We were stunned and impressed with the knowledge and curiosity that the children expressed. So many could understand syn bio when it was compared to something else in the activities, such as cutting and pasting for putting genes from one bacteria into another. Many events asked museum-goers to think about the ethics of syn bio and not only did the children come up with some interesting arguments, but the parents were interested as well. Over the discussion some of those initial ideas would change, which is really all we can hope for when talking about such controversial topics. One of the most unique opportunities we had was to sit in a roundtable discussion with members of the public and debate cutting edge technologies, such as engineering the genomes of mosquitos and opening a community lab (which some teams could possibly benefit from to do mammalian research!)