Team:OhioState/Inclusion
History
Synthetic biology, as the bleeding edge of modern innovation, demands that we examine the problems at hand from as many angles as possible, with as many different minds as we can manage. Those new angles and brilliant ideas can come from anyone, anywhere, and all we need to do is ensure that we encourage every voice to share their thoughts! It’s because of this necessity that we have done everything in our power to make sure that no one is left unheard. The scientific community, both past and present, has been made exclusive to the privileged classes that have traditionally laid claim to it. Examples like Rosalind Franklin, George Washington Carver, Cecilia Payne, and Carlos Juan Finlay, demonstrate how much talent has previously been hidden and covered up.
Voice
Since we want to avoid that kind of exclusion, we’ve done everything we can to ensure that our members are heard. To help with implicit and internalized biases, anonymous polls and surveys have been used for all of our major decisions, and we’ve asked for both public and private opinions from our members. We’ve ensured that everyone gets the chance to speak their mind, no matter what.
Attribution
The diversity of our team has been limited to that of our campus. Despite this, we’ve embraced the differences between us and made due accommodations, as we each come from different places, cultures, hardships, and privileges. Obviously, we’ve made sure that everyone is credited for exactly what they’ve done for this project, but we’ve also allowed members to list the numerous other things that they’ve spent time on over these months. Each of us has had duties, projects, and roadblocks outside of this enormous project, and we feel that it’s necessary to recognize it. After all, we’re just ordinary people, and none of us has been any more or less critical for our success.
Worldwide Collaboration
While we acknowledge that a language barrier separates teams across the world, we also know that research ties us all together in a much more meaningful way. We’ve met at least once with every team that has contacted us for collaboration and have made an effort to trade work and ideas with each of them. Our surveying efforts extended well beyond our own country and culture, and we’ve worked closely with teams in countries we’ve never been to. All of this was done not to gain ‘inclusivity points,’ but simply because we have no reason not to; knowledge knows no borders, so neither should we.