Team:Queens Canada/Outreach

This year QGEM collaborated with Shad Valley Queen’s to create a workshop in the field of synthetic biology for high school students. Our goal for this outreach initiative was to expose secondary school students to the emerging field of synthetic biology and spark an interest in this new technology. We tried to emulate the iGEM experience and with these ideas in mind planned a two day crash course. To read more about our Shad Valley workshop click here .

The Queen's Innovation Connector (QIC) is a joint program by the Faculty of Applied Science and School of Business. They aim to encourage, support, and create a platform for aspiring students, professor, and Canadian companies to collaborate through workshops, internship opportunities and programs. This summer they ran a summer program called Queen's Summer Innovation Initiative (QSII) which allowed a group of Queen's students from all faculties to learn entrepreneurship skills and put them to the test. The students formed small groups and over the course of four months, started their own businesses or worked in collaboration with a company, culminating to a 10,000 dollar grand prize to the most successful group.

Our goal in working with QIC was to build ties with innovative commerce and engineering students. This allows people who normally are not exposed to the field of synthetic biology to learn about the potential of this new technology. In the spirit of collaboration, QGEM gave a thirty minute talk to the members of QSII, explaining the fundamentals of synthetic biology and our project this year. We hope to work with them in the future, to provide QGEM with a stronger financial base and to inspire their members to work with this emerging field.

QSynBio is an organization Queen's aimed towards fostering growth and expansion of the synthetic biology community at Queen's university. It is aimed to be an open forum to learn about the field and develop necessary knowledge and techniques. This year we are changing the structure of QSynBio so that it ties in more closely with QGEM. This allows for more prepared members and ultimately more time and resources to spend on the project itself. We are expected about the new direction that this collaboration will take us in and hopefully both QGEM and QSynBio will continue to grow, gaining prominence in the Queen's community.

We've also reached out to different sources concerning our project and spread awareness of what we have been up to. The Kingston Whig has been kind enough to write an article about our endeavors. We have also been contacted by Ontario Morning, a CBC radio show who interviewed our project manager, Henry Barron. Click below to have a look at them!

Click here to read the Kingston Whig article!