Team:Edinburgh/HumanPractices/StakeholderEngagement


Team Edinburgh Finding NEMO

Institutions

During our project we highly evaluated the importance of collaborating and interacting with policy-makers and regulators.

Following the principles of MultiLevel Governance we contacted international, national ,regional and local organisations (UN, WHO, FAO, EU, UK regulatory agencies, Scottish regulatory agencies, The City Edinburgh's Council).

In doing so we interacted with various representatives and while with some representatives had limited time others supported us by sharing their valuable thoughts and experiences.

Even if the team analysed regulations, standards and initiatives related to the underlying science that constitute the foundation of the project, we decided to limit the discussions with such institutions to the project's applications.

Such decision was devised to maintain the discussions relevant, meaningful and practical while avoiding being sidetracked on points or themes that could be considered too theoretical or speculative.

During our interactions, we felt that the decision to discuss the applications over the science was highly beneficial for policymakers and regulators since these actors have limited knowledge of synthetic biology a huge interest in solving issues for the communities that they represent.

As a result of we gained useful information on
  • regulations, initiatives, directives and policies regarding drinking water and wastewater locally and globally
  • the needs and necessities of policymakers and regulators; especially the ones involved in environmental protection, water provison and public health
  • how a biosensor for water quality monitoring could fit with current regulations, initiatives and policies
  • what levels of a value chain a biosensor for water quality monitoring could be meaningful to policymakers, regulators and watchdogs
  • how our design of a biosensor for water quality monitoring could be aligned with the SDGs; with special regard to the SDG N6 Clean Water and Sanitation


Private Sector

During our project we quickly identified categories of prospected end-users. As for private organisations we identified them as prospected end-users of the Biosensor Platform given that there are companies that could be intersted in using our design in developing their own biosensors and as well as prospected end-users of the single water quality monitoring Biosensor that we produced as case study. (See HumanPractices/Applications )

During the early stages of our project, we had short interactions with private organisations belonging to different industries to understand what specific needs our project could have satisfied.

Given the team's vision of creating a universal and multipurpose Biosensor Platform and the unexpected burden of COVID19 pandemic on the team's lab work, the team decided to first develop the core structure of the Biosensor platform and later have selective engagement with organisations belonging to one industry to develop one biosensor as a case study.

Even if the purpose of the Biosensor Platform is to create multiple biosensors "on-demand" for any organisation and industry the decision to selectively engage with one industry over the others permitted us to avoid giving false hopes and expectations when confronted with restricted labwork, create a single proof of concept in record time (less than 3 weeks) as well as better addressing specific social, technological, environmental and economical concerns

Therefore following commercial needs, societal needs and the team's commitment to environmental protection, during the course of the project we decided to primarily engage with local companies specialised in drinking water and wastewater treatment to address environmental pollution and the SDG N6.

As a result we achieved
  • a working proof of concept for the detection of multiple molecules (metal ions and pathogens)
  • willingness of local companies to test our proof of concept on situ (November and December)
  • commercial interest from companies to form commercial partnership


As a result of we gained useful information on
  • how the biosensor platform could adress issues in different industries: Agriculture, Healthcare, Food-processing, Environmental protection, Data monitoring etc.
  • how environmental needs differ locally and globally by geographical location and other parameters such as income per capita
  • the commitment on environmental protection, water provison and public health by our local organisations
  • specific needs of local private organisations

NGOs

Given our commitment to environmental protection and the SDGs, we identified NGOs as one of our key stakeholder for the project's case study on for water quality testing
Even if the iGEM foundation is encouraging iGEM teams to solve problems by empowering local communities (local-problems-local-people) we wanted to be inclusive, global and effective given that our biosensor is most needed in low-income countries where environmental pollution impact the most vulnerable communities that constantly face economical, social, political and technological constrains.
Therefore even if we established local partnerships with local companies when we decided to engage with NGOs we purposely tried to contact NGOs in countries with different economic social and technological outlooks that were different from the UK's.
Between all the NGOs that we reached the ones that supported us the most were located in Moldova, India and Bangladesh, while the decision of contacting NGOs in India and Bangladesh was straightforward given a preliminary study on white and grey literature on environmental pollution the encounter with the Moldovan NGO was serendipitous.
Again, given the unavailability of a physical version of the biosensor due to lab restriction, similarly to the case of private companies the team decided to had a selective engagement with NGOs that seemed to need our biosensor the most.
During our interaction with the NGOs, we received strong positive feedback on the overall design of the biosensor and on various occasions they expressed the willingness to do public outreach programmes using our biosensor.



As a result we achieved
  • willingness of NGOs to test our biosensor during outreach programmes
  • a Children Book to use during outreach programmes


As a result of we gained useful information on
  • about needs, issues and constrains that we could adress in low-income countries
  • a more inclusive design that accounts for different segments of population
  • on how different political, cultural, religious attitudes could deter outreach programmes and the adoption of our technology

Academia

During our Human Practices we mainly engaged with professors from the University of Edinburgh's School of Social and Political Science and the School of Biological Sciences as well as consulting professors from Scotland's Rural College
When the team had interactions with academics teaching overseas the team often wanted to get insights from academics that were closer to specific communities and had the first-hand experience with local and specific issues.

End-Users

We asked communities of citizen scientists and diy biologists to give us feedack on our design. We contacted most of the active gorups of the DIY-bio community and we engaged with citizen scientists both on JOGL and FB. Specifically the discussions with members of communities of DIy-biologists in Bangladesh helped us reflect a lot on problems (logistics, storage, customs and foreign currency) related in purchasing and producing our biosensor in Bangladesh.

Wider Public

We approache the wider by considering them as consumer, in doing so we focused on the daily problems that differnt groups face in relation to driking water and water sanitarion, thus we conducted unstructured interviews with family and friends as well as a global survey about drinking water that we sent to all the iGEM ambassadors
In the same category of wider public we placed communities of students since these didn't qualify as users or potential users of our biosensor but just as stakeholders.

iGEM Community

We creation of a FB biosensor group and JOGL group and initiatives aimed to bring togheter iGEM teams, iGEM teams were one of the most precious categories of stakeholder since even their smallest contribution to our project brought us immense joy during this difficult times
To see all the initiatives that we made with the iGEM community check the pages Collaborations Partnerships and Initiatives