Team:TMU-Tokyo/Human spread

From 2013.igem.org



Presentation at “Science AGORA”


Last year, we participated in "Science AGORA", which held at the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation on November 10 and 11th. "Science AGORA" is one of the largest scientific events in Japan. Every year, so many and various people participate in this event. Through this event, all participants could realize interest and importance of science and they also could talk about them each other.


At a meeting space of the museum, we displayed a poster and gave the presentation about how . There were many people who worried about dangerous aspect of genetically modulating natural creatures. Also, some people worried that we were able to keep the security of experimental safety. We explained that most iGEMers including us and synthetic biologist consider carefully not only the security for members of their laboratory, but also the security for environment and all human beings. Also we explained we thought over how we could solve the security issues of our project. Finally, they came to understand that synthetic biology was not so dangerous and it has some useful aspects to environment and/or human beings.


We believe many people came to be interested in synthesis biology and the activity of iGEM because of our presentation. Also we believe that our presentation gave a good impression to synthetic biology on participants.







Presentation to the alumni of our university


In January, we participated in the large-scale reunion of our university and gave a presentation about our team’s activities and synthetic biology. Approximately 300 alumni came to this event and it was good opportunity for us to introduce synthetic biology to a lot of people. There are many alumni who didn’t have any knowledge of synthetic biology, but almost of all alumni enjoyed our presentation and evaluated our activity. Some of them gave us a fund for development of our team.


Also, we visited to many times a monthly-meeting of Mec, which is the NPO(incorporated nonprofit organization) and which was established by some alumni of Tokyo Metropolitan University. They act for the further development of our university and they evaluate our activity.


We have given a lot of presentation about our team’s project, the good influence to human beings of synthetic biology and activity of the iGEM, and so on. We think it helps the spread of right knowledge of the synthetic biology. We’re so happy if the number of people who accept that synthetic biology is good increase by our activities.




Lecture about the Synthetic Biology


In this year, we visited two high schools to give lectures about synthetic biology to high school students. First, we visited to Tamagawa-Gakuen High School on April, 20 and then, we visited to Ohyu-Gakuen High School on July, 11.


For the students who major in physical science of these high schools, we gave lectures about the activity of our team and synthetic biology. We wanted these high school students to know there is the biggest synthetic biological competition named iGEM. Also we wanted them to know synthetic biology and to be interested in this.


We explained clearly that what synthetic biology is and what the iGEM is. Also we introduced how the competition of last year was. We kept it in mind to explain them clearly and in easy word. After the lecture, we answered a lot of question from them. Additionally, we asked them for the cooperation to a questionnaire and investigated how their interests and understandings of synthetic biology and iGEM are changed after listening to our lecture.


Questionnaire results