Team:RUM-UPRM/Human Practices

Integrated Human Practices

• SynBio101: Summer Camp
• Communication with Stakeholders

SynBio101: Summer Camp

SynBio101: Summer Camp was Team RUM-UPRM’s main educational effort that lasted a week long. On Friday, we presented our project to the students participating in the experience. We started by explaining the problem and our reasons to focus on the contamination of Vieques. The presentation also included the different efforts and initiatives we designed to incorporate as Human Practices. We also showed the genetic circuits we had up until that moment, along with our rough ideas of the hardware. This presentation was very successful to us because we wanted to show them how to present an original project, which they were doing the next day, and to open a free discussion of our project. This format allowed us to see their new, fresh, and different points of view, and incorporate them into our project. During the year, we offered presentations to various settings and audiences about Synthetic Biology and our possible solution for Vieques, but these were very limited to an open discussion due to the formats of these forums. With the high schoolers, we were able to open our project to critiques and suggestions, especially in the Human practices initiatives and hardware.

The students started by questioning different areas of the project they did not understand, which made us rethink and modify our approach to explain the genetic circuit and its function, and to focus more on the specific contaminants in Vieques. In the Human Practices area, they suggested talking to local stakeholders that had worked before in Vieques. Another recommendation was to present and educate more the Puertorican people on Synthetic Biology, not just academia since this is a science that benefits the whole population. They also asked what we were doing to make sure people with differing needs could understand Synthetic Biology, pointing out the importance of including communities with disadvantages to our conversations. These recommendations became different initiatives like the collaboration with the University’s Association of Sign Language (AUSL) and graduate student PhD-MD Ian DeAndrea-Lazarus. In the Engineering aspects, the students presented concrete ideas and suggestions for our hardware, including what it should do and look. This enthusiastic reaction from the students inspired us to create and design the Bioreactor Design for Synthetic Biology Applications Competition. To learn more about our SynBio101: Summer Camp click here.

Communication with Stakeholders

Since the beginning of our investigation we started to educate and inform ourselves about what was happening with our neighbors' viequenses. Although we are in the middle of a pandemic, we were committed to do daily research and have different virtual communications with experts. The stakeholders we communicate with included professors, government faculty and researchers. For iGEM RUM-UPRM was really important to understand every aspect of our project and thus why we decided to have stakeholders from different backgrounds, this way they all gave a new perspective.

MIT Students

Our principal objective with this conference was to know directly from students researchers what challenges we could find in our path of research. Cristina Torres, Yamilex Acevedo, Gabriela Lopez, Paola, Jean and Pedro took the time on May 21th to express their experiences regarding investigations they have previously done in the natural science field. As fellow puertoricans, they revealed how they manage to work with communities who were not part of the academia. This last point was important for us to know, in order to continue educating and talking to others about our project.

Daniel Domínguez Gómez

On July 2th, iGEM Ambassador of Latin America, Daniel Dominguez gave us the Value and Risks Workshop design by iGEM. He gave us the necessary means to conduct our research safely and ethically. It was extremely important for iGEM RUM-UPRM to realize what we should and should not do this way so there is no inconvenience in our project.

Raquel Delgado-Valentín, PhD

Raquel Delgado-Valentín is a social worker and is a well known activist known for being part of the many fights for justice in Puerto Rico, one of them for Vieques. The main purpose of this conference on July 23th was to not only learn but to understand the fight that happened in Vieques. iGEM RUM-UPRM recognized the importance of meeting someone who lived through those moments in order to have that perspective present while working on our project.

Prof. Arturo Massol-Deyá

We wanted to know the experience of working in Vieques first hand from someone who has conducted investigations there. We decided to contact Professor Arturo Massol Deyá, professor in our university. On September 24th, he told us about his experience working in Vieques, what kind of challenges he faced during his time of investigation and what types of contaminants were most abundant there. By this process he directed us to a more specific pathway in our investigation.

Eng. Vanessa Suarez

Water Engineer Vanessa Suárez helped us by providing information about the standard processes that are applied to the bodies of water in Puerto Rico. In a conference on July 23th, she talked about how we should take into consideration what work has already been done in Vieques and who are doing this work. After that initial conversation, she kept collaborating with us and was the connection between us and Mike Barandiaran.

Dr. Ruben Diaz

Dr. Ruben Diaz, Mechanical Engineering a professor at our university, agreed to meet with us on September 2th. As part of the preparation for our competition Bioreactor Design for Synthetic Biology Applications we wanted to understand what type of model we should be aiming to create. Diaz provided us with the necessary knowledge to form and guide the competition in the right direction. It was important for us to extract all the information we could from this reunion because in the future we are going to employ the created design in our project.

Mike Barandiaran

Refuge Manager of the Caribbean Islands of the National Wildlife Refuge, Mike Barandiaran is our direct contact in Vieques. On October 7th, he gave us more insight about the process of directly communicating with the Marine and the agencies involved in the cleaning of the lake. Likewise, because he is part of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, he provided us with the tools to write a federal-competitive proposal for our project.




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