According to our survey, our audience shows a nearly perfectly balanced gender distribution (51% feamle, 49% male). The average test person was 23.7 years old, whereas women were slightly older than men (24.2 years compared to 23.3 years old). Pleasingly, we were able to reach nearly all ages: The youngest participants were 14 years old, the oldest a 72 years old gentleman. As one would expect, the distribution of degrees corresponded well with the average ages. The majority of our guests held a high school degree (60.0%, of these are 48.5% males, 51.5% are female). This is followed by the bachelor degree (20%) and the secondary school certificate ("middle school", 9.1%). Only a minority held a master degree or a PhD (both 5.4%).

By first established a common language and common basic knowledge on synthetic biology, we aimed to enable everyone in the audience to fully understand the science and the conceptof synthetic biology. Following our talk evening, the audience was asked to estimate their knowledge on synthetic biology. 91% of the test group could define the term with great (32.7%) or intermediate (58.2%) certainty. Only 9% were more (5.4%) or very (3.6%) uncertain. These numbers mirror the great success of our talk evening on educating the public. Yet of course, the test group was not chosen randomly, but consisted of people who actively and intentionally attended a talk ebening on the matter. Therefore, our data is most probably not representative and the high state of information also due to previous knowledge. According to the Eurobarometer 2010 presented by Reinhard Heil from the Institute for Technology Assessment and System Analysis at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, only 18% of the european public have heard of synthetic biology. Of these, only a fraction could define the term.

Following our talk evening, we captured what our audience associates with synthetic biology by asking them to chose from the options "Genetic Engineering", "Bioengineering", "Pharmaceutical Research", "Modelling", "Basic Research", "Biological Weapons", "Food", "Environmentalism", "Alternative Energies", "Killer Viruses", "Playing God" or else. Most people chose scientific options like "Genetic Engineering" or "Pharmaceutical Research" (shown in blue), which have indefinite connotations. Clearly negative terms like "Biological Weapons", "Killer Viruses" and "Playing God" (shown in red) were only selected by a minority. Interestingly, nearly 50% of the audience associated aspects such as "Environmentalism" and "Alternative Energies" (shown in green). According to the Eurobarometer 2010, in the public perception, synthetic biology is mainly associated with biotechnology, human enhancement, cloning of human and green biotechnology.