Human Practice

Communication

Synthetic Biology is a quickly developing field. If we want to enhance the development of Synthetic Biology and iGEM, communication is necessary. In this year, we communicated with different people, such as the researchers of SJTU in multiple fields including physics and electronics, the biologists in our city, and many new friends in different districts and the people working in corporations. Through the communication, we gave what we can offer to help people know more about Synthetic Biology and learned a lot from others.

Communication with Undergraduates in Shanghai

On April 21st 2013, we took part in the Life Science Forum of Undergraduates in Shanghai, which was held in Second Military Medical University. In the forum, we delivered a report introducing iGEM, synthetic biology, our team as well as our project last year to other schools that hasn't taken part in the iGEM competetion. Many undergraduates and teachers proposed various questions about synthetic biology and our 'Membrane Magic' system construction. Students from TJU as well as ECNU showed much interest in iGEM competition. They are planning to join our iGEM family in 2014. We also got lots of new ideas from other future-biologists through our communication!

Communication with New Friends around China

In this year we communicated with many new friends, including many iGEM participants.

Discussion with USTC iGEM team

We kept connection with iGEM team from University of Science and Technology of China. We had a short meeting concerning team development as well as brain storming methods. And we also provided several parts to Chinese University of Hong Kong to help their project.

Jun Yin, the undergraduate student from Shandong Univeisity, who kept contact with us since May 2013

And in May, an undergraduate student from Shandong University, who is also interested in iGEM, got to know one of our teammates in a conference held by Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China in University of Science and Technology of China. From then on, they communicated a lot. Since there was no iGEM team in Shandong University at that time, our teammate gave a lot of useful information to students of Shandong University, such as the process of participating in iGEM, the preparation for iGEM, and some communication conferences held by differnt 2013 iGEM teams in this year. Besides, in August, another student from Shandong University visited our team. Partially because of our help, our new friends from Shandong University have done a lot to construct their own iGEM team, and may participate the 2014 iGEM competition.

2013 iGEM conference in NCTU

In August, we attended the 2013 iGEM conference held by National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan. In the conference, we made friends with students from National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan University, National Yang Ming Universiy, Hong Kong University, and Zhejiang University. We talked about iGEM, synthetic biology and even daily life with our new friends, learned a lot from them, and helped each other to improve the projects. Really thanks to NCTU's treatment! Besides, we made hundreds of beautiful bookmarks as a gift, which is really liked by our new friends, and did a survey in the conference to investigate people's opinion on subject cross in the field of synthetic biology.

After the 2013 iGEM conference, Rou-Chien Liao, a cute girl from NYMU-Taipei team, visited our lab in SJTU. We communicated with her as the view of projects, and took her around in Shanghai for the whole day.

Our Bookmark

Group photo with Liao

In the year of 2013, we established a steady bond between variable friends and ourselves. We will cherish the friendship constucted on the basis of iGEM forever.

Communication with Corporation

Fig.1 corporation we contacted

In this year, we cooperated with corporations to search for the real application of our project. If we want the scientific results in the field of synthetic biology applied to people's daily life, cooperation with corporations is necessary. Just realizing this fact, we tried to contacted many corporations, and introduced our project as well as the concept of "synthetic biology" to the corporations. Figure 1 is part of the list of corporations we have contacted in this year.

Fig.2 Boyuan Biotech

During the plication of communication with corporations, the company, Shanghai Boyuan Biotechnology CO.,LTD , showed great interest in our project and wanted to know more about our project, iGEM, even synthetic biology. What's more, they are considering to attend Asian Jamboree with our team.

To communicate with Boyuan Biotech in detail, we held a conference in SJTU on Sep. 29, inviting the corporaion and other related researchers to communicate with each other. In the conference, the corporation and researchers gave lectures about what they did, and they listened to our project. They all showed great interest in our project due to our bright prospect on the regulation and optimization of our project.

Education Program

Zhiyuan college, a college constructed in SJTU aiming at fostering Chinese future academic masters, started a program called Zhiyuan Academic Elite Education Program (ZAEEP) to promote the acacemic literacy and leadership of students in SJTU.

Our team members also took the courses designed by Zhiyuan College in this year. Besides, during the program, our team also gave a lecture in the class to introduce our iGEM project, our experience of synthetic biology experiment and human practise process, thus educating students participating in ZAEEP the necessary skills they should have, at the same time, telling the concept of synthetic biology to them.

Never before has an iGEM team involved in such large scale academic elite cultivation plans supported by national education ministry. We took a big step forward to disseminate the iGEM project in such an official academic elite cultivation plan.