Team:RUM-UPRM/Inclusion
Inclusion
Being the only team from Puerto Rico and the Caribbean gave us the responsibility of directing how we wanted to see synthetic biology in the future. We wanted to see this science field being utilized by everyone and being a solution that could always be considered to resolve a local problem. In our Integrated Human Practices work we kept that in mind. Giving individuals that are not directly connected to the Synthetic Biology community a space where they can collaborate and contribute to our project and this field, gave them a sense of belonging which we wanted to achieve in the first place.
In the picture below, we had a meeting with Prof. Arturo Massol- Deyá who gave us a new aspect to our project.
Having in mind that everyone should be able to learn and understand what synthetic biology is in order for this field to be inclusive, we needed to educate ourselves. We worked together with the University Association of Sign Language (AUSL) at our university to understand what difficulties could have a person part of the deaf community. As a result of this we developed an activity devoted to educating the public about the importance of the ASL in the scientific community. We made this activity part of our Synthetic Biology Week. Also, we partnered in this activity with Ian De-Andrea Lazarus, a graduate student from Rochester University, to learn from a deaf person what are the challenges that they can face in the science field.
In the picture below, we were learning the alphabet with the association AUSL RUM.
