Team:Heidelberg/Outreach

Our project is designed to provide knowledge to a broader spectrum of people by creating a framework for in vivo peptide synthesis by NRPS including a design-tool for customization of the desired peptides. Therefore, we believe that it is of very high priority to inform the public about our project and to receive feedback and personal perceptions from the society. Hence, we build our concept for the interaction with the public upon four pillars: First, interaction and cooperation with experts from multiple scientific fields, second, interaction with the society in general and third, the young generation in particular. Finally, a close cooperation with artists is the fourth pillar. We round off our human practice advance by bringing together these four pillars under the roof of a talk evening on our future with synthetic biology, allowing interaction and discussion among them.

As conclusion, we believe that our Human Practice advance is well-established on different levels of interaction, as we searched the dialogue with various groups within the society. Furthermore, we strongly believe that we could open up people’s minds to synthetic biology and that we were able to clarify several misunderstanding or misconceptions. This impression is not only our belief, but was also the major feedback we received during our work for Human Practices. In addition to that, the exchange of impression was also very valuable for us and the advance within our project: Often the truth is as an object on a round table, if seen from one position it may clearly be identified as one contour, but from another point of view, it may be something completely different. Choosing the dialogue with people from different backgrounds would then be similar to moving around the table and to understand the nature of the object at the center at least a little better.