Partnership with iGEM CSMU Taiwan team

This year, iGEM CSMU Taiwan and us are both working on projects related to human health - oral cancer and glaucoma, respectively. When conversing with them, we realized we encountered the same obstacle: lack of awareness - many people are ignorant of these diseases. But, when members of the public are aware of a disease and its signs, they are more likely to take steps or go to healthcare facilities for check-ups to prevent it from happening to them.
When it comes to public health, lack of awareness proves to be an even more serious problem. This lack of knowledge is due to the lack of information, inaccessibility or inaccuracy, which is often made more complicated by cultural taboos, misconceptions and fears - discouraging people from taking preventive measures or seeing doctors. Lack of awareness is not only dangerous in terms of worsening health outcomes, it can also be divisive in society and can affect quality of life. For example, in the current pandemic situation, the government requires people to wear masks to help prevent the spread of the virus. However, we soon faced the challenge of an overabundance of information related to the virus. Some of this information may be false and potentially harmful. Inaccurate information spreads widely and at speed, making it more difficult for the public to identify verified facts and advice from trusted sources, such as their local health authority or WHO.
In order to solve this problem, iGEM NCKU Tainan and iGEM CSMU Taiwan decided to work together, with them taking head when it comes to artistic design and us taking care of all the written materials. Not only did we want to spread knowledge related to glaucoma and oral cancer, we also wanted to bring more public health knowledge to the public, bringing people one step closer to better health. In the beginning, our two teams only hoped to make good use of our connections to release the correct information about glaucoma and oral cancer to the public, but after some discussion, we considered inviting all iGEM teams to participate. The knowledge of our two teams is limited, but, if more people participate, we can share even more knowledge on different topics.
Therefore, with the efforts of iGEM NCKU Tainan 2020 and iGEM CSMU Taiwan, we established I’ve Gotta PhD.

I’ve Gotta PhD

In the beginning, we wanted to launch a website. However, considering there’s no web-developer in our team, it will take a long time and effort to establish the website. Thus, we decided to use Facebook, which has 2.5 billion users around the world and easy fan-page establishment, as the platform for our I've Gotta PhD. At the same time, we came up with seven topics that are highly related to public health after consulting UN’s guidelines on the third and fourth SDGs, which are Good Health and Well-being, and quality education. In early August, we started to promote our event through iGEM newsletter, Instagram, Facebook and email. Then, we opened submission from any interested teams. Teams can check the guidelines for these topics and select which they want to work on. Any kind of submissions are welcome, no matter they are articles, posters or videos.

Guidelines of seven topics

iGEM Panel Discussion

With I’ve Gotta PhD, we successfully conveyed much public health information to the public. We hoped that through our page, we are able to help contribute to the third and fourth SDG. However, we are still wondering whether there are other methods to push the movement of SDGs. iGEM NCKU Tainan and iGEM CSMU Taiwan invited five iGEM teams in Taiwan to have a virtual panel discussion, which was aimed at exchanging ideas about how to contribute to SDGs.