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Team:Macquarie Australia/collaborations
From 2013.igem.org
Collaboration
As part of our human outreach, we collaborated with Sydney University to cooperatively promote & educate synthetic biology to Australians, through an online competition titled
The Macquarie University iGEM team also held a day to mentor Sydney University, who have just entered the iGEM competition for the first time, this year.
Mentoring
Our collaborative approach involved providing mentoring assistance for Sydney University iGEM team who were participating for the first time in iGEM. We provided mentoring to them during the initial stages of this competition.
Strange Nature
The process of our collaborative outreach involved engaging high school students to utilize their creativity alongside their scientific education, in order to expand their knowledge on new and emerging molecular sciences, specifically synthetic biology. The idea of the 'Strange Nature' creative writing competition was initiated by the University of Sydney (USYD). The competition involved the submission of a 1000 word piece essay in response to "What problems will be caused or solved by synthetic biology?". The competition was setup with a judging panel of academics, with various awards for outstanding submissions.
Our collaborative approach was initiated by discussions on the project outline and goals with Sydney University. Macquarie University cooperated with USYD by contacting potential judges and high school english and science departments to provide as many high school students as possible with the opportunity to participate. Results
The Macquarie University iGEM team would like to thank Sydney University for the opportunity to collaborate together. The team at Macquarie has also really enjoyed getting to know the Sydney University team through social functions such as bowling and laser tag.
