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)

The data shows that synthetic biology is slightly more acceptable among non-believers. But the mean values lie above 3 for both views based on religious beliefs and personal opinion, thus synthetic biology is well accepted by our respondents. Lastly, we assess their response on the comic.

The comic is interesting for high school students as most of them rate it as 3 or above.

Our comic delivers the content well, 97% of our respondents rate it as 3 or above.

After reading the comic, most of the high school students have a better understanding on iGEM, synthetic biology or both.

During this open day event, we got the chance to meet some parents and conduct a survey. As most of them actually came to check on their children potential field of study in CUHK, we are so happy to learn that they are also enthusiastic about iGEM and synthetic biology.

We asked them on their familiarity to synthetic biology.

This result is consistent with response of high school students that came to our talk. (for question: do your parents understand what synthetic biology is?)

Parents are the gatekeepers of purchase, thus we investigate on their willing ness to buy and use products that is produced from synthetic biology.

It is quite surprising that parents are willing to buy or use products from synthetic biology. They probably think that what has been in the market is safe to use.

We also explore their acceptability on using bacteria in daily lives. For example, using microorganism to remove cancer-causing substances from environment. This is to know whether they will welcome our project or not in the future.

Most of the parents rated 3 for their acceptability, which means they accept synthetic biology but neither very supportive nor against it.