Team:UCSF/Medal
From 2011.igem.org
In September, the UCSF iGEM team gave a presentation at Lincoln High School about the iGEM competition and UCSF’s 2011 project. We made use of analogies to help the high school students understand the concepts of Synthetic Biology. We also gave an outline of the steps we took to design and then research our project. Then we presented our conclusions and shared our summer’s experiences with them.
We think that this kind of outreach to high school students can be a great educational tool. It is important to let these students know that they can have opportunities to do undergraduate research as the students of the UCSF team did. We hope that these students were inspired by students just like them to study a scientific major or pursue careers in science through our visit to the high school.
We found that the students were very candid with their questions and were interested in hearing about life in the lab,in addition to the research that we did. Being able to talk to someone close to their own age who is performing laboratory research is an excellent way to expose high school students. We believe our visit can be used as a model for other iGEM teams to visit high school students near their own labs.
Some photos of our visit and a slideshow of the presentation we gave are available below. A powerpoint copy of the presentation can be obtained by emailing our iGEM coordinator, Veronica Zepeda (veronica.zepeda@ucsf.edu)
Speaking to the 2nd Year ALHS Biotechnology Students
Q&A Session