Team:Technion Israel/Practices
Practices
Throughout our project, it was very important to us to keep constant contact with the community in order to educate about synthetic biology, as well as receive feedback about our product. Our practice and policy placed an emphasis on making sure that our product could be manufactured to be fit for the public, both from a safety standpoint and a marketing standpoint. Having a constant conversation with the community, both local and worldwide, enabled us to get the word out about our project and receive valuable feedback that helped point out where we had room for improvement. By implementing the feedback we received, we believe we were able to develop a better product and project.
Education
We participated in a science conference for high school students from Kiryat Shmona, a city in Northern Israel. As part of the conference, we gave a lecture about synthetic biology.
It was very important to us to bring synthetic biology into the forefront of the public's awareness. Even though bacteria is found and used all around us, such as in food, cosmetics, and industry, the public does not tend to look to bacteria as a toolbox for solutions to everyday problems.
In today's day and age, there is almost no better way to reach the public than through media platforms. Therefore, we focused on educating about our project and synthetic biology in general through such platforms.
We made a couple movies which we published on our Facebook page:
We were interviewed on the “Northern Radio” by Prof. Ofer Etzion, where we spoke about our project as well as synthetic biology.
Two newspaper articles were published explaining about our team, the iGEM competition, and our project: one in a local newspaper of the Zichron Ya'akov area
and one in a national newspaper called Yediot Aharonot.
Dialogue with the Public
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Street Survey
Our first step to planning our project after we decided on a problem to address, was to find out just how much of a problem it is. We took to the streets to ask people what they think about male pattern baldness, its causes, and its effect on men.
Check out this video to see the responses
Product Survey
No product can meet the public's need without feedback from potential users. Therefore, we conducted a survey among Israelis, to which we received 439 responses (and counting)! such 58.3% of the respondents were male and 41.7% were female. The majority were between the ages of 18 to 35 and single.
Here is a short summary of the results:To see the full results, click here.
On a scale of 1 to 5, how much does baldness affect men psychologically and socially (1= not at all, 5= a lot)?
Have you heard of products incorporating bacteria?
Do you think balding men would use a product which incorporates bacteria naturally found on the scalp, which have been genetically modified to prevent male pattern baldness?
What, in your opinion, might prevent balding men from using a product which incorporates bacteria naturally found on the scalp, which have been genetically modified to prevent male pattern baldness?
