Team:ETH Zurich/Team/Human practices
From 2011.igem.org
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The [http://www.bsse.ethz.ch/events/open_house Open House] day of the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering (D-BSSE) of ETH Zurich is an event where scientists show their research to the public. During the day, all the department groups present their research through posters, pictures, computer simulations, real data etc. The event is organized with the goal to familiarize people with the work that is done in the department. The event is also a nice way for the scientists that work in a particular group of the department to get to know better what the other groups of the same department are doing. The Open House Day is also very useful for master students in a search for a master thesis and/or PhD positions. Among the visitors, there are many families with small children. The groups always find playful ways of talking about science and research to them, through games, puzzles, legos etc. | The [http://www.bsse.ethz.ch/events/open_house Open House] day of the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering (D-BSSE) of ETH Zurich is an event where scientists show their research to the public. During the day, all the department groups present their research through posters, pictures, computer simulations, real data etc. The event is organized with the goal to familiarize people with the work that is done in the department. The event is also a nice way for the scientists that work in a particular group of the department to get to know better what the other groups of the same department are doing. The Open House Day is also very useful for master students in a search for a master thesis and/or PhD positions. Among the visitors, there are many families with small children. The groups always find playful ways of talking about science and research to them, through games, puzzles, legos etc. | ||
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During this year's D-BSSE Open House Day, one of the stands was reserved for iGEM and our SmoColi project. We presented a Poster, showed our simulations and experimental results on a computer and even presented our microfluidics channels.We carried out a survey on the topic of Synthetic Biology. We talked to many visitors as well as to scientists of the D-BSSE department. | During this year's D-BSSE Open House Day, one of the stands was reserved for iGEM and our SmoColi project. We presented a Poster, showed our simulations and experimental results on a computer and even presented our microfluidics channels.We carried out a survey on the topic of Synthetic Biology. We talked to many visitors as well as to scientists of the D-BSSE department. |
Revision as of 10:56, 25 October 2011
SmoColi human outreach |
Human practices are an important part of iGEM. Synthetic Biology and the idea of a parts registry is not well-established among the general public. It is important to inform people of the potentials, but also the risks of synthetic biology. For our human practices we decided to do several things. On one hand we were present with a talk and discussion round at the “CBB come together afternoon” to introduce iGEM to the new master students. On the other hand we were present at the Open house day of the department of Biosystems Science and Engineering (D-BSSE) of the ETHZ to bring SmoColi to the public. |
7.10.11 CBB Get together afternoonThe CBB Get together afternoon is an event where students, alumni and professors of the Computational Biology and Bioinformatics (CBB) Master programme at ETH come together and talk about academic life. Every year several senior students and alumni present their experiences and give programme-related advice to their colleagues (primarily to first year students). On this year's CBB Get together, Lukas had the honor to talk about his studies and he highlighted the iGEM competition as one of his most memorable experiences. Among others, he talked about synthetic biology and about our project. After the event, during the "Apero", many first-year students approached us and started asking lots of questions. We simply couldn't resist taking out our laptops and presenting our cool simulations and our results. We had very interesting discussions with them, and we feel that we conveyed our excitement about our SmoColi. We are convinced that after our talk many of the new students are thinking about joining the team next year.
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22.10.11 D-BSSE Open house
During this year's D-BSSE Open House Day, one of the stands was reserved for iGEM and our SmoColi project. We presented a Poster, showed our simulations and experimental results on a computer and even presented our microfluidics channels.We carried out a survey on the topic of Synthetic Biology. We talked to many visitors as well as to scientists of the D-BSSE department. The science done in the department was classified in three categories: Investigation, Simulation and Design/Engineering. iGEM was classified under the third category.
Poster and Discussion
SurveyWe decided to do a survey to find out what the general public thinks about Synthetic Biology, what is the people's degree of knowledge regarding this field and how open they are to accepting genetically engineered machines into their daily lives.
1. Is your profession related to genetic engineering?
2. Does anyone in your family have anything to do with genetic engineering?
3. How would you evaluate your knowledge of Synthetic Biology on a scale from 1 to 10? (1 - no knowledge, 10 - very good knowledge)
4. How high would you evaluate the risks of Synthetic Biology on a scale from 1 to 10? (1 - no risk, 10 - high risk)
5. How much trust do you have in the scientists that do Synthetic Biology on a scale from 1 to 10? (1 - no trust at all, 10 - complete trust)
6. Do you think that a critical discussion for the “Synthetic Biology” issue is possible with the scientists?
7. Could you imagine an implementation like SmoColi in your daily life?
8. Do you think it is justifiable that students make genetically modified organisms for a competition like iGEM?
9. Is the conduction of animal experiments for a competition like iGEM justifiable?
10. Can you imagine how the genetically modified organisms could simplify your life?
In order to get a better understanding of how people feel about synthetic biology, we analyzed the data that we collected during the Open House Day. A total of 34 people filled out the survey, ranging from undergraduate and graduate students, scientists to members of the general public.
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