Team:Hong Kong CUHK/openday

CUHK Open Day

This open day aims on introducing CUHK programs to high school students. We also indirectly promoting Engineering and Life Sciences programs to the students as we emphasized the fact that by being enrolled to either Engineering or Life Sciences programs, they will get the chance to join iGEM competition.

We informed them on what is synthetic biology, iGEM and our project.

Firstly, we explore how well they know about iGEM and synthetic biology.

Similar to high school talk, majority of high school students do not know what is iGEM or synthetic biology.

In relation to our project, we review whether they have heard of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon or Benzo[a]pyrene.

Most of the students have not heard of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon or benzo alpha pyrene, despite of their hazards.

We investigate their response towards our project ideas.

Majority of the high school students think that our project idea is interesting, useful, or both.

Beyond home, religion has been a great issue for synthetic biology. Interestingly, 50% Hong Kong’ population are irreligious or having other minority beliefs. The correlation between religious beliefs to acceptability of synthetic biology among the high school students is illustrated below. We asked them to rate their degree of acceptability towards synthetic biology within the scale 1 to 5 and we calculate the mean. (1=Not acceptable, 3=Acceptable, 5=Very acceptable)

We have a close to 50:50 responses for this question. It is advisable to change our delivery method and details if we want to outreach these details to the public.

We have obtained results based on individual view of synthetic biology and our project.
The following results are obtained by discussing synthetic biology correlation from one’s environment.

From home, what makes information is well known is by involving family members to spread the knowledge and news. Unfortunately, the majority of parents do not know what synthetic biology is. This is shown in the following results.

Beyond home, religion has been a great issue for synthetic biology. Interestingly, 50% Hong Kong’ population are irreligious or having other minority beliefs. The correlation between religious beliefs to acceptability of synthetic biology among the students is illustrated below.

The results indicated that, there is various insight of synthetic biology among different religious belief. Non-believers are most welcome towards synthetic biology.

The results from religion and personal point of view are similar. This shows that high school student’s view on synthetic biology relates directly to their religious belief.

As a budding field, synthetic biology will be a very integral part of a knowledge-based economy in the future. Hong Kong, being a service-oriented economy has started to have some knowledge-based economic sectors. We asked the high school students on which one they prefer, knowledge-based or service-oriented?

The response is 50:50 for favoring knowledge-based or service-oriented economy. The majority of students believe that synthetic biology will be an integral part of knowledge-based economy.

Lastly, we also asked their interest in joining iGEM.

Majority of Hong Kong High School students are interested in joining iGEM in the future.

Comments about out project: What do you think of using bacteria to degrade cancer-causing pollutants effectively?

• Acceptable
• Beneficial
• May prevent death but can be dangerous to be used
• Great
• Interesting
• Positive
• Worth to try
• Society’s benefit