Human Practices
iGEM teams are unique and leading the field because they "go beyond the lab" to imagine their projects in a social/environmental context, to better understand issues that might influence the design and use of their technologies.
Teams work with students and advisors from the humanities and social sciences to explore topics concerning ethical, legal, social, economic, safety or security issues related to their work. Consideration of these Human Practices is crucial for building safe and sustainable projects that serve the public interest.
For more information, please see the Practices Hub.
Note
You must fill out this page in order to be considered for all awards for Human Practices:
- Human Practices silver medal criterion
- Human Practices gold medal criterion
- Best Integrated Human Practices award
- Best Education and Public Engagement award
Summer STEM Outreach
Every year, the Cooper Union hosts a summer STEM program for high school students. Recently, this program started including a bioengineering section of high school students. Since they were working only a few rooms over from us, we saw this as an opportunity to share our project and findings with the community. So, we prepared a presentation for the high schoolers and allowed them to give us feedback and discuss our project. This was a valuable experience for both the STEM students and for our igem team.
This presentation was useful for the STEM students because it gave them an idea of the type of work that is currently going on in biology research labs. It also showed them that the basic lab techniques they were learning could be applied to more advanced project ideas. We hope that this presentation sparked their interest and encouraged them to continue to pursue research projects in genetic engineering and biology. This outreach also proved to be beneficial to us. Preparing a presentation on our project helped us organize the various parts of the project and improve our public speaking skills. After the presentation, we had a bioethics discussion with the students. Their feedback helped point out possible misuses of our device and what this could mean if it became readily available to the public. We followed up some of the issues they raised in our team ethics discussion. The discussion and presentation helped us improve our overall presentation while creating a memorable experience for both ourselves and the high school students.