Science Communication
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As everything, our project was affected by the global corona crisis, especially our plans for science communication. On our “Project Description” site we created a mindmap showing in which ways (negative and positive) the pandemic had an impact on our project. Since a lot of our events we planned had been cancelled we soon realized that under these circumstances we must change our science communication plans and use virtual communication to reach out to the public. You can read all about it below!
In the early beginning of the iGEM season we planned to be present at several events where we could communicate our project and other aspects of life science to a broad audience.
Some events which were planned were:
Vienna’s Children University
The Long Night of Research
Summer festival at Muthgasse, BOKU
Presentations in schools
As COVID-19 started to spread globally in early spring and thus real-life meetings were no longer an option we started to rethink how we could see the pandemic as a chance to explore new ways of communicating and exploit every possible way of virtual communication. Since the internet and especially social media platforms should replace real-life interactions, we came up with the following ideas:
In the last months we were able to practice science communication in a variety of ways. Thanks to collaborations with other iGEM teams we were able to reach an even broader audience than we first imagined. Especially in these days the solidarity between different iGEM teams during the competition was very important and we are tremendously thankful for the great support among the different teams.
A Phage News(letter)
It was of great importance to us to regularly update our sponsors about our project. For this, we created a newsletter for our sponsors, supporters and everyone else interested in our project which we sent out via email. Every month from July to October, we reported the most substantial development of our project in the last month. If you would like to see a review of our project work, click here to check them out!
Project Presentation for Biomin
On July 8 we presented our idea for the first time to our sponsor Biomin. Biomin is an Austrian animal nutrition and health company and a sponsor of the iGEM team in Vienna since 2018. This year, however, was the first year we were not able to present in person. Didn’t matter! The staff of Biomin was just as interested over video and the experience was great.
Thank you, Biomin, for having us again!
A Children’s Book from Delft
Kids in the elementary school Brünnerstraße 139,1210 Vienna
On October 7, our partner team TU Delft invited us to join them in a collaboration to promote the usefulness of phages to young children. They wrote and illustrated a beautiful book about phage Fred and its quest for a bacteria friend. We found it a fantastic way to introduce young children to the wonders of microbiology and raise their interest in science! In the end of the book, they introduced our projects and what good phages can do in the “real” world. We helped them to spread the story and their vision by translating the book into German and showing it to children. We were able to show it to the kids in the elementary school Brünnerstraße 139, 1210 Vienna and to the kids in the kindergarten of our university BOKU. They all loved the story of Phage Fred and his adventures. Thank you very much TU Delft for sharing the book with us. Here you can see some impressions from TUDelft:
Impressions from team TUDelft
After showing the book to the kids in the elementary school we thought it would be awesome to have the book printed as a “real” book :) Therefore, we provided the children of the BOKU kindergarten with a hardcover version of the book and they loved it ! Some impressions can be seen here:
Impressions from team BOKU Vienna
Youtube Collab mit Maastricht
Youtube is a fantastic way to spread information to a broad audience fast! We are very happy that we were able to produce a Youtube video in the course of our collaboration with the iGEM team Maastricht. In this video we explained our project and why we think it is important. We had a great time working on the concept and realizing it. By using Youtube as a distribution platform we hope to reach a broad audience, but especially teenagers and young adults as they spend a lot of time on this platform: We hope to get them interested in synthetic biology and science! We are excited if some questions arise in the comment section.
You can check out the video on Youtube here .
Friends with the enemy: Viruses in Gene Therapy
In the course of our collaboration with the iGEM team Brno we created an outreach material about gene therapy. In the end we included a quiz with 10 questions so that the audience can check if they have remembered everything correctly. This material was distributed on the website of team Brno to the public. With respect to the ongoing pandemic, virtual knowledge transfer turned out to be a valuable way of getting a message around.
If your browser does not support embedded PDF you can open the presentation in a new tab here .
Zoom Event “Get cozy with PHANGEL”
In the last weeks of the competition we wanted to share our outcomes of our project with the public. For this, we hosted a virtual zoom-meeting. We created a Facebook event which we shared on our social media platforms and everyone who wanted to join could do so from their own home. By this we were able to reach a broad audience.
We were so excited when 36 people from different backgrounds joined the zoom meeting with us.
In the beginning, we gave a presentation about our project and its outcome.
If your browser does not support embedded PDF you can open the presentation in a new tab here .
In the end of the presentation we had an open discussion about GMOs and their acceptance in the public. We asked the audience to use the thumbs up reaction button on zoom to tell us if they would be open to get treated by genetically engineered organisms. Some in our audience did not hesitate to react positively, other people were hesitating a lot and did not seem to be sure about it.
Afterwards we had a kahoot quiz, in which the participants could test whether they understood the project.
To entertain our audience a bit more we also played “Stadt-Land-Fluss” with additional categories like “microorganisms”, “laboratory equipment” and “scientist”. It was so much fun!
We are very happy with the planning and realization of our own little event.
QuizTime via Instagram
Social media appearance was of great importance especially in times of the pandemic. We created quizzes on Instagram to interact with our followers and to get them enthusiastic about our project. We asked questions about phages and bacteriophage therapy. Everyone was able to leave a comment and join our quiz.
