SynBio 101: Summer Camp

SynBio101: Summer Camp is an educational outreach summer camp founded and led by undergraduate students from the iGEM RUM-UPRM research team at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez. Our mission is to ensure that the next generation of synthetic biologists, regardless of race, gender, or socioeconomic status, can learn the core concepts of synthetic biology and are made aware of the vast opportunities that exist to pursue a career in the sciences, focusing on natural & life sciences, and engineering.

We conducted a test on Monday with different topics that were going to be presented throughout the week to standardize the learning of the students and measure the delineated objectives. On Friday, the same test was offered to compare the improvement of the highschoolers on said topics during the experience. The students’ answers also allowed us to modify the information presented in lectures to their level of knowledge and be more prepared for their possible questions. To learn more about our SynBio101: Summer Camp click here.

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Correct answers presented by students to questions related to Synthetic Biology, lab work and bioethics.

To display the array of diversity of fields working in synthetic biology, we develop the Second Edition of Synthetic Biology Week which occurred from October 6th through October 9th. This event consisted in four activities to reinforce the importance of this emergent science, but also to impact and contribute in puertorican communities. This week included:The new Era of Biotechnology, Why should ASL be involved in the scientific community? , Road to Space Biology: SEDS Edition, VIEQUES: An Environmental Crisis. To start our week long webinar we had the lecture of our Proclamation. Click on the titles to see more information about each activity!

The competition Bioreactor Design for Synthetic Biology Applications originate from the initiative of integrating the community into our project. By helping us design our hardware, they had the opportunity to learn about synthetic biology. Also, we were able to educate in different aspects of engineering and how it is achievable to be part of this interdisciplinary field. If you are interested in finding out how the competition went, click here!

During this cycle we had the honor of being asked to educate different publics. During this cycle we had the honor of being asked to educate different areas of our puerto rican community. Even through the pandemic, we manage to achieve our goal of teaching about synthetic biology. Educating with more focus group meant we needed to know what specific topics of synthetic biology they wanted to learn about. Click here. to learned what places we got to educate more puerto ricans on synthetic biology.

As a team we appreciated every space we get to engage with more people about synthetic biology and our project. It was our job to create the initial curiosity in the minds of the public, impacting the way they saw science. By talking in atypical places for science we were able to connect who were not interested in Synthetic Biology in the first place. To know more about our Public Engagement click here.