Team:Wisconsin-Madison/outreach

With the exponential advances in technologies enabling biological research such as gene synthesizers and high-throughput ‘-omics’ datasets, reverse engineering of biological function has given way to truly synthetic biology in which the design of novel genetic circuit is possible. Along with these advances, there has been a marked divergence from the Synthetic Biology community and public knowledge pertaining to the capabilities of Synthetic Biology.  It is our job as pioneers in this field to maintain integrity, espouse strict ethics, and disseminate an understanding of the inherent societal benefits that synthetic biology can bring to the world. This summer, the UW-Madison iGEM team focused on outreach for youth in our community by presenting a poster and informative game about designing plasmids for biosensors at both the <a href="https://2011.igem.org/Team:Wisconsin-Madison/scienceolympiad">National Science Olympiad</a> for middle and high school students as well as a summer science camp for elementary school students.