Team:BGU Israel/Outreach

Outreach Introduction

We embarked on a massive outreach campaign to encourage discourse with the public about synthetic biology, in order to dispel misconceptions and foster debate. Our outreach campaign was aimed at reaching as many people from different communities and age groups as possible. We wanted to burst out of the invisible walls separating the academy from the general public and trigger discussions in a variety of platforms, making the subject accessible to all.

SynBio for Kids

It’s a cliché, but children really are the future (and so is synthetic biology!). We believe that exposing children to science is crucial for creating the next generation of researchers and their supporters. Therefore, we wanted to make sure that our outreach campaign reached not only adults but children and teenagers as well, to get them thinking at an early age about synthetic biology and the challenges and possibilities it offers. Synthetic biology is a natural match for kids’ unlimited curiosity and creativity: it’s like playing Lego with life!

Science Night

Activity Kit

Since Science Night was such a big success, we decided to make our activities and materials available for anyone to easily use. And so, we present the "SynBio Activity Kit for Kids", including detailed explanation about the activities plus all materials needed. We hope many future teams will use these activities and add their own!

Get the full SynBio Activity Kit for Kids:

Media

We took a two-pronged approach to our media campaign in order to make synthetic biology accessible to as many people as possible through a wide variety of channels.

New Media: The Bottom-Up Approach

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For many people, new media, including websites, blogs, and social networks, has become a major source of information about the world. Its unique advantage over forms of traditional media is that it enables a direct dialog between the public and the source, in which people can express their positions freely. It can also make information accessible to a wider range of people, who are not involved in the field or who don’t read traditional news sources. For researchers, new media is an important tool to enable a complex issue, such as synthetic biology, to become accessible for the general public.

During the past months, we addressed the public through a wide range of channels, including:

1. A number of blogs: end of the world, a view from the bleachers, and Up to a Constant.
2. Podcasts



3. We opened a Youtube channel featuring a whiteboard animation explaining our project and a number of other videos of our group at various events.


4. Our official Facebook page received more than 3,000 likes and has reached over 200,000 people from over 20 different countries. The page has allowed us to directly interact with people and answer their concerns and questions, and we have received hundreds of messages and comments on Facebook.
   
   Our personal favorite was a message from a fourteen year old girl: ”Science has been my biggest dream since I was a child. You have inspired me to believe I can fulfill this dream one day.” She heard about the project through a popular Facebook page called ”Tweeting Statuses”, which posted a goofy picture of the team with a caption explaining our project, and got around 3,400 likes and over 600 shares the day it was posted.


5. We also launched a crowd-funding campaign, which we introduced our project and synthetic biology while in the same time asking for help from the public to raise the last of the needed funds to participate in the competition. The campaign was a huge success, beyond our wildest expactations. We raised close to $15,000 which is 171% of our initial goal!.

Our Facebook exposure chart up to mid September:

Conventional Media: The Top-Down Approach

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Despite the recent rise of new media, conventional media still has enormous influence in education and creating a public debate.
In general, stories in newspapers, TV programs, and news websites have a longer, more informative format, and we took advantage of all three for our human practice campaign.
Moreover, traditional media reaches segments of the population who are not necessarily active on Facebook or other new media sources.

1. A feature story about our project and the iGEM competition was broadcasted on Israel’s national television, and we also appeared on a morning show on Channel 2, Israel’s most viewed channel.


2. We were also interviewed on Israel’s national radio and in the South’s regional radio.
   
   
   
   
3. One of Israel’s biggest economic news sources, the Calcalist, published a printed as well as digital article about the project and the iGEM competition.


4. We also appeared in Israel’s biggest science news website – Hayadaan and in the synthetic biology website GetSynBio.


5. The project was covered in a two-page spread in Yediot Ahronot, Israel’s most popular printed newspaper, and a version of the article appeared in the homepage of its online counterpart, the most popular news website in Israel, Ynet News.

       

”Tweeting Statuses” post about iGEM-BGU


Our team’s Facebook Page


Our Headstart crowdfunding site


”Destroying Themselves”, Yediot Ahronot’s article about iGEM_BGU.


”The Bacteria that Destroy Themselves”, iGEM_BGU in Ynet News


iGEM_BGU on the Channel 1 News


iGEM_BGU on the Channel 2 News

Implementations

Decision & Policy makers

Changes, especially great ones, are complex. Technological solution is the beginning. Public support is essential. But for a change to happen, one must reach decision makers and stakeholders. We divided our efforts into two tangential paths – professional and political. Both are the key component in any decision making process.

Professional decision makers

We addressed all relevant governmental offices which regulate the use of synthetic biology products – health ministry, environmental protection ministry and the agriculture ministry.

Consultations with Dr. Orna Matzner, head of the Science Unit in the Ministry of Environmental Protection's Chief Scientist's Office were essential to our project. "The problem", explained Dr. Matzner, "is that regulation often trails behind technology. What we need is responsible development of technology that will take into account the environmental and health implications of that technology."

We were pleased to demonstrate to Dr. Matzner that our tool, in fact, ensures that biosafety is not compromised through the use of synthetic biology. It allows the use of biosynthetic technology while protecting biodiversity. This is especially imperative in Israel due to the high population density in the country and the close proximity of residential areas to industry, agriculture, and open spaces.

Ministry of health chief scientist is a leading professional authority. He is responsible for the authorization of pharmaceuticals and food, both of them are fields which synthetic biology attend to take a great role in the coming years. "we are always trying to find balance between research needs and the public health" says Dr. Michal simovich. This bureau support is mandatory if we want to gain the public’s trust in our mechanism and in its reliability. According to "regulation of biological diseases generators" law, if the institutional committee saw that the damage exceeds the expected research fear of harming state security or public safety , health or security, it will instruct the researcher to continue editing the study regarding to that request of the committee . Additional laws were brought up in the meeting regarding novel food harsh registration. It is important to note that the high committee of clinical trials in humans, or the Helsinki committee, is also under the responsibility of the chief scientist. During the meeting, the leading scientist noted that many more tests and examinations should be done - before using iGEM-BGU’s technology as a standard in any synthetic biology product inserted to the human body. However, it was also been noted that once found reliable, our technology brings synthetic biology one step closer to fulfil its promising medical revolution.

We have also met the chief scientist in the Ministry of Agriculture & Rural Development, Dr. Avi Perl. He opened the session saying "Agriculture harms the environment - no matter what you do. the transgenic agriculture do not harm the environment more then natural agriculture" He kept on explaining us the complex process of approving a development, "The committee deals with genetically engineered plants in Israel named “Vartzam”, In order to get permission for agriculture uses you must prove that the chance to pass on traits non-deliberately is negligible, so as presenting a proof that those GMO’s are vanishing from the environment after reasonable time, leaving the environment intact". His office is the main authority in implementing new technologies in agriculture field. Since Israel is a world-leader in agriculture technologies, we aimed to start the implementation of our technology from this field. After we demonstrated the chief scientist that a reliable safety mechanism is very well at reach he emphasized that "If our vision is to release GEMs to the nature then the terminator is an integral part of it!", Yet first we should use the self destruct mechanism in a contained environment like bioreactor." This way our bio-safety mechanism can very well begin its implementation in upcoming years and live experiments can be held.

Other important aspect of decision making is the economic one. There are plenty of wonderful groundbreaking ideas out there. Unfortunately, many of them are too expensive to implement. Our technology is not only simple, but is also cheap to install in any synthetic biology product you have. Its approximated cost is one hundred dollars for P.A.S.E 1 and two hundred dollars for P.A.S.E 2, what constitute only a small fraction of the expenses required in development and production of synthetic biology deliverables.

The President of Israel’s Endorsements

We believe that our mission of promoting synthetic biology is a matter of national interest. Therefore we strived to meet with the President of Israel, Shimon Peres, in order to seek his endorsement and support for our project and for our ultimate goal. We met with his advisors and presented them our project requesting to set up a meeting. A week later we received a personal letter written by the President and a date was set to meet with him in person when we return from the Regional Jamboree.

Minister of Science

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