# Education & Public Engagement
## Science mediation @ Cité des Sciences et de l'industrie
### The event
The 29th edition of the French Science Festival (Fête de la Science) was held on October 3 and 4 at the Cité des sciences et de l'industrie in Paris.
For the first time, because of the sanitary conditions, this festive event was extended online which meant that only 1000 people could enter the building, whereas usually there are ten times more. During these two days, there were about thirty activities proposed highlighting different areas of science and numerous experiments to be carried out at home.
Scientists, those involved in scientific and technical culture, researchers and YouTubers were invited to the festival to enable this meeting between the general public and science around a multi-themed programme (space, environment, physics, chemistry, technology, etc...)
### Our contribution
We joined forces with the mediators of the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie and the 4 other Parisian teams (GO_Paris-Saclay, Ionis_Paris, Paris_Bettencourt, Sorbonne_U_Paris) and we presented our projects on two screens and held 2 stands with various activities that pleased the younger but also the older visitors.
#### Come with us to extract kiwi DNA
DNA extraction often intrigues and amuses the large public, especially when it is done out of common vegetables one usually eats (like the fruits), and using reactives commonly used for other purposes in everyday life (like dish soap). Because of the sanitary conditions, the public was not allowed to perform manipulations, but we did it ourselves and gave samples to the children present. We extracted DNA from kiwi and highlighted to the visitors the fact that DNA, the fruit's genetic information, is contained in their cells, because the fruit has to be crushed to extract it.
#### Come with us for a closer look at the fauna and flora
For the general public, biology often refers to the observation of flora and fauna and the use of a microscope makes everything “scientific”. The visitors were thus not disappointed as we were able to show them different butterflies and corals in more detail, thanks to a microscope.
#### A little quiz on daily bacteria?
Even with impeccable hygiene, many bacteria surround us. This is actually not that bad: the adult human body harbours more than 100000 billion bacteria, compared to almost none in a foetus and those bacteria are vital for our survival.
Bacteria are all around, we cannot see them with a naked eye, but we wanted to show them on this day.
Several petri dishes have been made with samples taken from different places where bacteria can be found such as hands, hair, telephone … To interact with the public, we made a quiz with a picture of a petri dish and two proposals of places for these bacteria.
This fun quiz was particularly popular among children who were able to visualise colonies of bacteria that they cannot see with the naked eye on their hands for example.
#### What is iGEM? The different projects
5 Parisian teams, 5 different projects.
Apart from the playful scientific activities presented above, we also took the opportunity to present iGEM to the general public and explain our project. Both the scientists and the non-scientists showed interest, and their feedback helped us improve. Thus we had the opportunity to publicise the illegal rosewood traffic which is little known as shown by the survey we carried out.
## Educational Video Collaboration
The TU Delft iGEM Team proposed to us to make an informative video wherein as many iGEM teams as possible share their project to show what amazing things we can achieve with synthetic biology!
So, we sent a 10 seconds video wherein we showcase the problem we are solving and the way we are doing this.
The goal of this collaboration is to educate people about synthetic biology.
## CELLS: Workshop on Computing among Cells
[CELLS, Computing among Cells](https://parsys.lri.fr/CELLS/") is a workshop of the [34th International Symposium on Distributed Computing](http://www.disc-conference.org/wp/disc2020/") that took place online from 12th to 16th of October 2020.
In the framework of this international scientific conference, we gave a presentation on How To Train Your Microbe For Rosewood Sensing?
This gave us the opportunity to present our project to scientists from a completely different background, to introduce iGEM to them and to get feedback on our project afterwards. This experience was challenging as the audience was not of biologists only, but mainly mathematicians and computer scientists. The CELLS meeting was broadcast live.
We joined forces with the mediators of the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie and the 4 other Parisian teams (GO_Paris-Saclay, Ionis_Paris, Paris_Bettencourt, Sorbonne_U_Paris) and we presented our projects on two screens and held 2 stands with various activities that pleased the younger but also the older visitors.
#### Come with us to extract kiwi DNA
DNA extraction often intrigues and amuses the large public, especially when it is done out of common vegetables one usually eats (like the fruits), and using reactives commonly used for other purposes in everyday life (like dish soap). Because of the sanitary conditions, the public was not allowed to perform manipulations, but we did it ourselves and gave samples to the children present. We extracted DNA from kiwi and highlighted to the visitors the fact that DNA, the fruit's genetic information, is contained in their cells, because the fruit has to be crushed to extract it.
#### Come with us for a closer look at the fauna and flora
For the general public, biology often refers to the observation of flora and fauna and the use of a microscope makes everything “scientific”. The visitors were thus not disappointed as we were able to show them different butterflies and corals in more detail, thanks to a microscope.
#### A little quiz on daily bacteria?
Even with impeccable hygiene, many bacteria surround us. This is actually not that bad: the adult human body harbours more than 100000 billion bacteria, compared to almost none in a foetus and those bacteria are vital for our survival.
Bacteria are all around, we cannot see them with a naked eye, but we wanted to show them on this day.
Several petri dishes have been made with samples taken from different places where bacteria can be found such as hands, hair, telephone … To interact with the public, we made a quiz with a picture of a petri dish and two proposals of places for these bacteria.
This fun quiz was particularly popular among children who were able to visualise colonies of bacteria that they cannot see with the naked eye on their hands for example.
#### What is iGEM? The different projects
5 Parisian teams, 5 different projects.
Apart from the playful scientific activities presented above, we also took the opportunity to present iGEM to the general public and explain our project. Both the scientists and the non-scientists showed interest, and their feedback helped us improve. Thus we had the opportunity to publicise the illegal rosewood traffic which is little known as shown by the survey we carried out.
## Educational Video Collaboration
The TU Delft iGEM Team proposed to us to make an informative video wherein as many iGEM teams as possible share their project to show what amazing things we can achieve with synthetic biology!
So, we sent a 10 seconds video wherein we showcase the problem we are solving and the way we are doing this.
The goal of this collaboration is to educate people about synthetic biology.
## CELLS: Workshop on Computing among Cells
[CELLS, Computing among Cells](https://parsys.lri.fr/CELLS/") is a workshop of the [34th International Symposium on Distributed Computing](http://www.disc-conference.org/wp/disc2020/") that took place online from 12th to 16th of October 2020.
In the framework of this international scientific conference, we gave a presentation on How To Train Your Microbe For Rosewood Sensing?
This gave us the opportunity to present our project to scientists from a completely different background, to introduce iGEM to them and to get feedback on our project afterwards. This experience was challenging as the audience was not of biologists only, but mainly mathematicians and computer scientists. The CELLS meeting was broadcast live.
