Partnership
Due to the impact of the COVID-19, teams all over the world have encountered many problems. In order to ensure the smooth progress of this year's project, every team is doing a lot of excellent work in their own way. iGEM emphasizes the win-win cooperation between the teams, especially in this year's special circumstances, the teams should strengthen cooperation to overcome difficulties together.
With BIT-China
——for team's heritage and IGEMer of the future
Against this background, team BIT chose to cooperate in-depth with the BIT-China team from the same university to work together more substantively and better to help the two teams.
The BIT team is very interested in the HP work done by team BIT-China in 19 years. Because this year iGEM launched the "Two phase" competition mode. Although a team can have different composition in the two years of the "Two phase", it will be even more important if the team members who participated in the project in the first year can continue to participate in the second year. It is possible to make a better project. Therefore, the team's heritage has become very important. Team BIT-China interviewed a number of iGEM teams in 2019, designed a series of questions on "team heritage" and received a lot of answers. In the survey conducted by BIT-China last year, it was found that many iGEMers have gained a lot from iGEM, and many people also expressed their willingness to participate in the future iGEM. But in fact, few iGEMers really stayed in the team and participated in the next year's project. In the results, many iGEMers mentioned that their team did not have a corresponding incentive mechanism, and there was no motivation to keep them. This question is of great interest to team BIT. Therefore, tean BIT got in touch with team BIT-China this year, hoping to cooperate in this regard.
Therefore, we want to understand why iGEMers are willing to participate in iGEM.
According to the results of the questionnaire, most iGEMers believe that iGEM is a training for future research work and an excellent opportunity to communicate with more teams. At the same time, most iGEMers don't think it is important to get an award through iGEM for higher education.
Similarly, when asking most iGEMers what they think is the most valuable content they have obtained in iGEM, most iGEMers also think so.Most iGEMers believe that participating in iGEM to train their scientific research capabilities is vital to them.
Through this questionnaire survey, combined with the results of the BIT_China team in 2019, we believe that if we can establish a "course to iGEM" and "student to teacher" system, it may be possible to increase the team members to participate in another year The passion of iGEM.
Through such research results, team BIT and team BIT-China reached a consensus, hoping to conduct in-depth cooperation in personnel training, help the two teams work better this year, and lay the foundation for the second year of work. For this purpose, team BIT and team BIT-China have carried out a series of related cooperation work at different stages of the project.
In the early stage of the project, how to make the new team members better understand iGEM so as to better promote the project, BIT and BIT-China jointly organized a series of related courses to train the team members together.
Therefore, during our online process, we prioritize the learning needs of our team members and the students' course expertise. The BIT team combines online learning to be members of the team, students from the college, and students from the entire school. A series of courses combined with professional courses have been prepared to help students learn more professional knowledge from their own knowledge background, and also be able to understand iGEM and synthetic biology in the process. Similarly, these courses were taught by iGEMers from the past team BIT. At the same time, we also held trial lectures in the team members after class to help the team members better understand the content of the course, and at the same time exercise their ability to explain relevant content for new team members in the future. Similarly, we shared these contents on the bilibili platform to help more students learn and understand related aspects.
In the middle of the project, both teams participated in CCIC. Before the game, BIT and BIT-China conducted project exchanges to prepare for this meeting. Team BIT put forward some suggestions for the poster of BIT-China from the perspective of the artist, and helped the BIT-China team to better modify its poster, and finally won the best poster award in CCIC.
After CCIC, BIT received suggestions from the judge and many other teams. These suggestions were basically focused on the hardware part. Many people think that there is a problem with the related manual centrifugal device. Team BIT-China helps BIT to troubleshoot related issues. BIT adopted the relevant suggestions provided by BIT-China and finally decided to use the fingertip top as the new manual centrifugal device.
And at the end of the project, every team faced the challenge of WIKI freeze. In previous years, every WIKI of team BIT was made by the team members themselves or by the help of the teammates’ classmates and friends. These tasks not only caused great pressure on the team members, but in fact, we can do better. Therefore, we communicated with the BIT-China team on the production of WIKI. Team BIT-China suggested that we can try to cooperate with students from other professional backgrounds, looking for more professional students to help us achieve more results we want to achieve, and team BIT-China recommended several people from the same project team. These students have undertaken the technical details of the 2020 WIKI of the BIT team, and their work is excellent!
Not only in 2020, the BIT team and the BIT-China team will also cooperate more with the laboratory in the future, not only for the production of WIKI, but also a series of lectures to help more people.
Not only that, the BIT team and the BIT-China team are also working together to attract students from different backgrounds to become iGEMers and to reserve talents for the future. In order to help more freshmen understand the university, understand the research work, and understand the iGEM, BIT and BIT-China jointly held a coffee metting. Because of the impact of the COVID-19, it is irresponsible to hold large-scale lectures, so the two teams chose Use the form of holding several coffee metting to achieve the effect of popular science publicity.
Team BIT and team BIT-China started in-depth cooperation in talent training this year. The two teams will sum up their experience this year and cultivate more professional iGEMers in the iGEM process next year, and make better results!
With SCUT-China and UESTC-Software
——Established "Science for All Alliance" for science popularization work
Because of the impact of the COVID-19, many teams have begun to explore new models of popular science publicity and education. Looking at the popular science publicity work of many excellent teams, they are all very good, but we found a problem: the popular science publicity work of many excellent teams has not become a "series" but a "brand". At the same time, many teams have been doing lectures for children, high school students, undergraduates and other popular science activities. Although they are necessary and very meaningful, they lack "explosiveness" .As for synthetic biology, a discipline that is relatively "inconspicuous" in the public eye, if it is really to be known to the public, there should be enough big news. At the same time, according to the research report and handbook of team BIT and team SCUT-China, it can be known that in the current science popularization work, many teams are not doing well or even missing some links.
SCUT_China's wiki: https://2020.igem.org/Team:SCUT_China/Education
Team BIT, SCUT-China, and UESTC-Software realized these problems after careful research and several conference calls, and decided to join together to make changes. Therefore, the three teams jointly organized and established the “Science for All Alliance”. In 2020, iGEM Giant Jamboree issued a call for more iGEMers to join us!
The original intention of the Science for All Alliance was to help each team better conduct popular science publicity activities. The Science for All Alliance hopes to form a community with popular science activities as the main content, and provide a platform to provide more opportunities and inspiration for all teams.
We temporarily choose this logo as the LOGO of Science for All Alliance. The LOGO adopts the traditional Chinese ink and wash style, and uses the Chinese character "普" as the main element. The word "普" means "universal", which means that everyone has the opportunity to be exposed. This coincides with the theme of our Science for All Alliance. Not only that, the character "普" in Chinese also means "multiple suns are shining in the sky". The Science for All Alliance believes that all teams should unite, just like multiple suns, to jointly carry out more high-quality science popularization work, so that more people can see our glory.
Science for All Alliance has a complete organizational structure to carry out all aspects of work.
Science for All Alliance is divided into five functional departments: New Media Department, Outreach Department, Organization Department, General Affairs Department and Mutual Evaluation Committee.
As a popular science work alliance, the work of the New Media Department is very important. The new media department is divided into two parts: the manuscript group and the video group, which correspond to text-based science content and video-based science content. The manuscript group is not only responsible for producing corresponding text-based science content, but also responsible for contacting other teams and reprinting relevant content. The video team is not only responsible for the production of video science content, but also for contacting other teams to reprint excellent content. The manuscript team is responsible for operating the WeChat account and Zhihu account, and the video team is responsible for operating the bilibili account.
The outreach part is the international exchange group and the enterprise group. The international exchange team is responsible for getting in touch with excellent foreign teams, and strive to translate their work content to the country, so that more people can benefit. The enterprise group is responsible for contacting domestic and foreign enterprises, media, etc., to provide everyone with a larger and more diverse platform for popular science work.
The organization part is activity group and cooperation group. The activity group is responsible for organizing larger regional gatherings. The cooperation group is responsible for helping various teams cooperate to carry out a series of branded science popularization activities.
The General Affairs Department is responsible for the management of the entire alliance, and is responsible for the changes, approval of activities, and fund management.
At the same time, in order to better help each team improve the quality of science popularization work, Science for All Alliance established a mutual evaluation committee, inviting people with different professional backgrounds and educational backgrounds to join the committee to evaluate each science popularization work. By collecting voices from different angles, we can help more people participate in popular science work, showing the unique diversity and Inclusivity of Science for All Alliance.
At the same time, in order to better help each team improve the quality of science popularization work, Science for All Alliance established a mutual evaluation committee, inviting people with different professional backgrounds and educational backgrounds to join the committee to evaluate each science popularization work. By collecting voices from different angles, we can help more people participate in popular science work, showing the unique diversity and Inclusivity of Science for All Alliance.
As the number of participating teams increases, Science for All Alliance hopes to:
1. Use the public account of "Science for All Alliance" to submit video and other promotional materials on major platforms. Having an official account recognized by the platform can better obtain support and allow related works to be seen by more people. At the same time, We hope to get in touch with many outstanding teams from other countries through the name of "Science for All Alliance", and introduce more non-Chinese content translations to China, so that the work of iGEMers can help more people. At the same time, the public account of Science for All Alliance will also back up the materials and content provided by iGEMers.
2. Science for All Alliance hopes to invite experts from all parties, iGEMer and ordinary students to set up committees to evaluate the content published by "Science for All Alliance" on various platforms. Because there are many intellectual problems in the popular science content done by many teams. The Science for All Alliance hopes to help iGEMers participating in the Science for All Alliance to improve the quality of science popularization work by establishing a mutual evaluation system.
3. Science for All Alliance will contact enterprises, media, etc. as a group, and provide iGEMers with a larger and more professional platform to conduct popular science publicity activities. At the same time, Science for All Alliance will also hold a series of activities as a group to help each team to preserve and pass on their own special activities into a system, on a large scale.
4. Science for All Alliance hopes to provide a platform for teams to communicate and cooperate with each other. The Science for All Alliance hopes to build a community, provide opportunities and platforms for cooperation between teams with similar ideas, and help everyone better conduct popular science publicity work.
Science for All Alliance has just started, and we hope that more teams will join us and work together to raise the science popularization work to a new height!
Created By Beijing Institute of Technology