Team:Heidelberg/Interviews
Expert Interviews
Questions and Answers
Expert Interviews
Discussing scientific projects and ideas is immensely important and valuable to learn from each other, get new ideas, and develop them. This is why we decided to talk to as many scientists and stakeholders from the very beginning of our project. Therefore we reached out to politicians, science journalists, teachers, and experts in the field of systems biology, medical informatics and many more.Dr. Lorenz Adlung
Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
Dr. Lorenz Adlung is an expert in the field of systems biology, as he is working on mathematical models of biological systems. Moreover, he is a science communication enthusiast. He takes part in Science Slams, open forums, and discussions, and many more formats of science communication on a regular basis. In our interview, he explained to us what is important when doing science communication and why it is not all about reaching as many people as possible, but also about reaching the right people to convince them that science matters. He encouraged us to try out different formats of science communication and to actually do science communication – even though we are Bachelor- and Master students and don’t conduct our own research yet. He also gave us advice on how to handle criticism on the internet. Regarding our Science Slam, his experience was very useful too. Adlung gave us some tips on what to pay attention to when doing a Science Slam, like for example how to address different crowds.
Besides this, we could also profit from his expertise in mathematical modeling. In our interview, he gave us an insight into his own research and discussed with us how to tackle problems especially at the beginning when starting mathematical modeling with no previous experience.
Theresia Bauer
State parliament of Baden-Württemberg
Science has an important impact on politics and vice versa, as the government subsidizes numerous scientific projects. Moreover, the development of rather new scientific fields like synthetic biology is always closely linked with the decisions of politicians and the public discussion. Acknowledging the importance of politics in science, we decided to discuss the chances as well as the risks, which arise from synthetic biology, with a politician. Hence, we talked with Theresia Bauer. She is the representative of the electoral district Heidelberg in the state parliament of Baden-Württemberg and minister for science, research, and art.
We were interested in the opinion of a politician on the role of synthetic biology as a field of research and what scientific developments are hoped for. Bauer stated that only from basic research new knowledge emerges, which is highly important to work out new solutions. The first role of synthetic biology currently lies in understanding the greater depth of how life works, as she said. We also discussed whether the public and politicians need to be more open to the use of biotechnology and both agreed that they should. Science communication plays an important role here. Bauer made us aware that one of the major challenges is to facilitate differentiated judgments about the use of biotechnology and take people’s fear for it. She encouraged us as scientists to take the trouble and participate in public debates since only discussions can solve problems.
Prof. Dr. Chase Beisel
Helmholtz Center for Infection Research in Würzburg
Prof. Dr. Chase Beisel is the head of the „RNA Synthetic Biology“ research group at the Helmholtz Center for Infection Research in Würzburg. He is a chemical engineer and biotechnologist and works according to the principle of the French researcher Louis Pasteur: “In line with Pasteur‘s approach, I work in problems that both grant fundamental knowledge but also tackle a societal issue.” With the goal to understand the diversity of CRISPR-Cas systems in order to be able to use them against genetic diseases or multi-resistant pathogens. He for example is working on a new CRISPR-based diagnostic platform that should help in the detection of SARS-Cov2.
We had to chance to talk with Prof. Dr. Chase Beisel further concerning our TRIPLE-Helix Experiment. Please see our Integrated Human Practices page for the documentation.
Dr. Kerstin Göpfrich
Head of the Research Group “Biophysical Engineering (of Life)”
Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg
Dr. Göpfrich surprised us when she was explaining how easy the procedure of creating DNA origami is. We discussed the importance of DNA origami in a bottom-up approach to creating a synthetic cell. Furthermore, we asked Dr. Göpfrich for her opinion on combining the bottom-up and top-down approaches in the future. We learned that this already happens. She pointed out that we have the freedom to be creative, take what works, and combine the approaches. Introducing us to her doctoral thesis, in which she created the smallest DNA membrane pore to this time, Dr. Göpfrich explained to us a couple of interesting things about DNA-Based Lipid Membrane pores.
We were also interested in the future developments of synthetic biology and asked her about further membrane-based compartments coming up next in the creation of synthetic cells. She pointed out that of the biggest challenges is the membrane itself: Once the compartment is formed, even simple operations become difficult. She said that “we need new tools to arrange the components that we have inside a cell on the nano- and microscale”. According to her assessment, another interesting direction to go to is adding synthetic parts to natural cells.
With her enthusiasm about her work Dr. Göpfrich has not only infected us, but also many students. As the Co-Founder of Ring-a-scientist, she also engages a lot in science communication. With this idea, she also inspired us to work more with students.
Prof. Dr. Markus Gumbel
Mannheim University of Applied Sciences
More and more projects in the life sciences make use of machine learning methods. This is a very powerful and sophisticated technology, many people are still not aware about. Prof. Gumbel has collected experience in this field for many years and introduced us to some of the benefits of machine learning for computational biology. He also explained the connections between artificial intelligence used in computational biology like and image or speech recognition.
We had to chance to talk with Prof. Dr. Markus Humbel further concerning our Language Model PRISM. Please see our Integrated Human Practices page for the documentation.
Dr. Dorothea Kaufmann
Study Program Manager and Senior Lecturer
Institute for Pharmacy and Molecular Biotechnology Heidelberg
One of the key parts in iGEM Human Practices is education. Due to the broad spectrum of possibilities that this topic offers, we wanted to engage with a professional in that field and talked with Dr. Dorothea Kaufmann. She is an expert in university didactics and science communication. For her excellent university teaching, she earned the Ars Legendi prize, so we thought it’s the best person to address our questions.
From her we learned that centering the content around the learner and not around the teacher is very important. Explaining her App MobiLE which is a quiz app for first-year molecular biotechnology students, Dr. Kaufmann told us that for the learning process it is essential to discuss science and not just study books alone. This advice helped us to shape our experiment booklet, such that the user is invited to think about science critically. Moreover, we learned that the new generation belongs to the “digital natives”, which means that offering education in the natural habitat of the learners causes not only more fun while learning but is also more effective. Approaches like games are also recommendable. Besides the new ideas, we got from Kaufmann she also shared her spirit and passion for education and has infected us with her zeal to boil down science for everyone and get to the people.
Dr. Kaufmann also helped us to refine our concept of a Science Slam, as she encouraged us to broaden the spectrum of our Science Slam to all members of society and not only university students.
Dr. Anja Störiko
Science Journalist
Writing is a necessary part of our project: Not only the texts for the wiki but also the article we published in the article BioSpektrum, the experiment booklet, and many more things need to be written down in an understandable and interesting manner. This is why we thought it’s reasonable to get some advice on how to write properly from an expert in journalism like Anja Störiko. For us having someone with that broad background and a great experience was very helpful.
Firstly, we learned that there are not that many differences between “normal” journalism and science journalism as one might expect. One of the most important things is to simplify the content, as Störiko said. She made us aware of what to pay attention to when writing. Things she stressed out were being short and concise and putting much effort into the headline and first sentences because those are the crucial components that will decide whether someone will read the article or not. Visual material supporting and written content is as well important as producing pictures in the head of the reader with the written content.
Given the many facets of our project, we asked Ms. Störiko how to best approach the documentation of our project, since she as a journalist is confronted with this issue on an every-day-basis. She advised us to create a storyboard and determine the goals, how to get there and in the end, look at what you achieved.
Nowadays the media is often focused on positive findings and research outcomes that can be directly used to help people. We were wondering how to reconcile this with synthetic biology since this is still basic research. We learned from Ms. Störiko, that it must not always be actual scientific content you write about, but also for example the person behind the research. Having different views on research is an enrichment!