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Outreach
The Penn iGEM team volunteered at the Philadelphia Science Festival, running a booth during Science Discovery Day. The Science Festival is a ten-day program dedicated to building public interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. On Discovery Day, children come to Clark Park with their families and visit various booths to learn about science and perform fun, simple experiments. Our team ran an activity for participants to extract DNA from a cheek swab using household items, including saltwater, detergent, and alcohol. The children gained a great sense of accomplishment from performing a biology experiment, and we were happy to inspire some of America’s future scientists!
The Penn iGEM team presented an overview of our project and discussed the IGEM competition with a group of rising freshmen participating in a pre-college summer program. This program was designed to introduce incoming engineers to each engineering major offered at Penn. These incoming engineering students learned about the fascinating discipline of synthetic biology and many expressed an increased interest in bioengineering upon conclusion of the presentation.
