Team:UNILausanne/Inclusion
Inclusion
Even if we are competing as a Swiss team, many of our team members are not of Swiss origin,
so to reflect this existing diversity into our work as well, we created two sub-projects.
First off, we collaborated with Chalmers-Gothenburg iGEM team to create The Transcriptome, a science blog
translated to 8 languages to try to reach the broadest audience possible. We wanted to make scientific information available to people in their native language, to make the reading experience as unchallenging as possible.
We also conducted some interviews with people in different stages of their career (master students,
post-docs, professors) in the STEM field to raise awareness on the underrepresentation of women in STEM.
We tried to get some insight on their experiences in their career paths, as well as get their opinion on
measures that have already been implemented trying to solve this issue.
Not everyone speaks English
Learning another language is no easy task. As everyone, who tried it, knows, it takes dedication, effort, but most of all, it takes resources and time. Learning a second language on a good level is a privilege that not everyone can access.
Learning the foreign language is not the same easy for everyone - regardless of the scientific potential, they might not be able to reach their full success because of their lower English level. Overall, science needs one clear language and there is no arguing that it has been established to be English. But in science communication, we should look for people’s interest in science and make them feel welcome.
Some countries, or even continents, have a small representation in the iGEM competition. It might be an outcome of many factors, but we think that language accessibility in science is one of them.
Writing about synthetic biology and iGEM in someone’s native language can make them feel more welcome and encourage them to take part in this competition. We believe that more people with diverse backgrounds and cultures working in synthetic biology can give an additional boost to the field.
As many other iGEM teams, many of us have different, sometimes mixed origins. Thanks to this, and by joining forces with Chalmers-Gothenburg iGEM team, we made a multilingual science communication blog. Featuring eight languages, it has a potential to span over many countries around the world.
One could argue that with actual technological advancement and online translations there is no need for a multilingual blog. Some internet browsers can even translate entire websites with one click. It’s a good solution, but it might not be good enough to translate the scientific texts. Automatically translated text is usually harder to read, and feels unnatural. On the other hand, the texts on our blog are translated by native speakers and care is given to make the texts easy to read and to understand.
Therefore, we believe that our multilingual science communication blog contributes to a more diverse community in iGEM and beyond. If you want to know more about our blog please visit Science Communication & Education.
Raising awareness of an equal gender representation in drug tests and scientific studies
Women face different inequalities in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). In Switzerland, several initiatives have been established by the universities and the government in order to reduce them as much as possible. Unfortunately, gender equality is still far from being achieved and much remains to be done.
Talking with Christine Sempoux, President of the Commission for the Academic Promotion of Women at the University of Lausanne, we addressed the issue of the under-representation of women in scientific studies. The scientific community has always assumed that the difference between men and women, apart from the sexual organs, does not exist or is not important and that has been made without the slightest proof. However, more and more articles are published about the importance of taking gender into account in the experimental design of scientific studies. With Christine Sempoux, we talked about the differences between females and males with respect to the reactions to drugs and to the immune responses. Christine Sempoux thus made us understand that, even in scientific studies which are intended to be as objective as possible, the representation of women is low due to our internal biases and stereotypes, which can give rise to misleading conclusions if applied to women. It was therefore important that our main project B.O.T (Bacterial Oscillation Therapy) included in its experimental design the female sex if it ever came to be tested. She highlighted the fact that our oscillatory azurin expression system could have different effects between women and men due to differences in circadian rhythm. This is an important point that needs to be tested in the further development of our therapy if we want that B.O.T becomes one day a reality.
This discussion really led us to question our experimental design. This goes further than gender issues: this under-representation today leads to health problems in women using drugs or treatments not adapted to their physiology. Thus, future B.O.T. clinical trials will have to be conducted with a similar representation of men and women.
