This year, the team designed and executed Human Practice activities from three perspectives: Publicity, NGO of iGEM and Industry. We supposed to make more individuals know and participate in iGEM, and combine theoretical research with the production.
Overview
2015-UESTC TEAM
Combined with the development of iGEM, the background of synthetic biology, and the actual situation of ours, we designed and executed nine activities from three perspectives. First of all, aiming to spread iGEM further and broader, we publicized iGEM to people of diverse ages in different places wherever we were able to reach. Thus everyone could realize the significance of synthetic biology. Afterwards, we founded the non-government organization (NGO) which started from our college to the southwest area of China. It is the momentous first step for us to connected school teams with social organizations that all talking about iGEM. Last but not least, our team considered to apply our project into the industrial application. Therefore, we ensured our biosafety system from medical experts, got advice from biotechnology technicians and cooperated with other social NGO.
Above all, we compared our activities with previous teams’ of our school. Not just only few people have idea of iGEM and synthetic biology, this year in our effort, iGEM has expanded to these corners in Chengdu and even some other provinces of China, which shown in the following map:
The specific logos of each place mainly embody our activities have covered the wide range of China and the influence of iGEM. And we believe that the future development of iGEM and synthetic biology will be broader more than we expected.
iGEM connects all together
kindergarten
More details!
Primary school
More details!
Aid education
More details!
Considering that the students have curiosity in new things and infinite development possibilities in the process of learning. Aiming at different levels of education stage, our team preached with the aid of university knowledge, from shallow to deep, respectively, in kindergarten, primary school, secondary school and university. Furthermore, we planned to spread iGEM and synthetic biology to remote area where the students have few educational resources to get latest knowledge from outside.
On the one hand, we expect that we can cover the educational levels and range as complete as possible; On the other hand, we hope to instill correct scientific thinking to children from an early age, and try our best to eliminate peoples’ prejudice to the synthetic biology.
iGEM makes NGO come into being
iGEM Club
More details!
Southwest Union of China
More details!
As we wanted to spread and communicate iGEM with other school teams and social organizations, and the situation that registered teams in southwest China is less, we considered to found a non-government organization (NGO) of iGEM. Firstly, combined to our present power, we established iGEM club in our campus this year, which was the prototype of our NGO. Therefore, we could help low-grade students to understand iGEM quickly, and provide them the competition information timely. In addition, we can teach them experiment skills and guide their study direction.
Furthermore, we gathered other three registered teams, two college teams and two high schools to establish the iGEM Southwest Union of China, which is the first NGO related to iGEM in Chengdu. Most noteworthy is that the senior high school and Chengdu Biology Maker we invited were going to attend iGEM in future. Ultimately the most important, we hope that Southwest Union of China can stay strong and stable, which form long-term and close cooperation, and expand its influence and strength.
iGEM links industry to campus
Hong Kong
University
More details!
Jin Douyun Space Company
More details!
Biology Maker
Studio
More details!
Throughout calendar year teams’ human practice of UESTC, those teams’ publicity activities were only limited to campus range and experimental stage, not really achieved the purposes "to show synthetic biology to more different groups" and “promote the project to industry level”. However, this year one of our objective is that apply our project into the industrial application. With this purpose, we firstly communicated with medical professor from Hong Kong University and he gave us some valuable advice to ensure our safety system. After that, our team went out of the campus, communicate with Anno Medical Devices Co.Ltd and Jindouyun Hackerspace Company. Not only did we introduce them iGEM and magnetotactic Escherichia coli, but also get a lot of valuable opinions from them. At the same time, we also contacted the Director of the Medical Device Industry Technology Innovation Strategic Alliance of Sichuan Province, which will strengthen our iGEM Southwest Union of China in the future cooperation.
Out of the campus, we had also come into contact with the social NGO, Chengdu Biology Maker. They are all biology lovers gathered from different jobs do their own bioinstrumentations. During the communication, we put forward the purpose of making a biofuel cell device, they were willing to help us used by their 3D printer. Moreover, they invited us to join the establishment of Chengdu Fab lab in the future, which means that our cooperation and communication would not limit to this stage.
