Science communication and education both go hand-in-hand. Our team took a multifaceted approach towards scientific communication. We tried our best to reach out as wide a demographic as possible and address pertinent questions in synthetic biology. Our goal being to make science accessible to everyone while still maintaining the highest integrity of research. Our various initiatives on science communication are listed below.

Webinars

Due the COVID, we unfortunately could not directly interact with our audiences, therefore, chose the medium of a web-based seminar, or a "webinar" to communicate and teach science to a larger audience. We had the opportunity to conduct three webinars for over 600 high school students in the 11th and 12th grades belonging to STEM backgrounds of Deeksha Center for Learning, Bangalore. The webinar's objective was to introduce students to the basic concepts of synthetic biology while also showcasing applications of synthetic biology in the backdrop of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. We were able to have an open dialogue with these students about Genetically Modified Organisms. This also gave us a platform to discuss our project with these students, who gave us invaluable insights and feedback, which we have implemented in our human-centric design.

We also circulated a survey among these students to gauge their opinions about synthtic biology and science as a whole. The student demographic consisted of 35% (217) females and 65% (403) males. All students had a background in Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Mathematics and were preparing for preparatory exams to undergraduate universities. From the survey, we conducted there were a few key insights that we gained. Our primary objective was to expose students to research methodology and application-oriented research practices. Initially, 52.8% of the students mentioned that they were interested in a career in research. Following our webinar, when asked the same question, 74% of the students were open to the idea of a career in research, with 77.4% expressing interest in having synthetic biology as part of their curriculum.

The second half of our webinar focused exclusively on GMOs and students' perception of GMOs. 74.3% of the participants believed that Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) are a boon to curb the hunger epidemic worldwide. When the remaining 25.7% were asked if knowing that 115 Nobel Laureates worldwide support GMOs would change their perception of GMOs, 74.3% reported feeling more secure about GMOs and their applications.

You can find a recording of our webinar here.

Abhigyaan Collaboration

Misinformation and myths have become highly prevelant in our society, especially so since the beginning of the pandemic carried by the panic associated with it. We collaborated with Abhigyaan — a student-run organization at BITS Pilani K.K Birla Goa campus which aims at providing quality education to the underprivileged and work towards their social upliftment. We, along with Abhigyaan, debunked some myths about COVID and promoted safer and smarter ways to deal with the pandemic through posters and infographics. All of our posts can be found on our instagram page. A few of them have been shown below!

Figure 1: An infographic from our collboration with Abhigyaan

Figure 2: An infographic from our collboration with Abhigyaan

BioSummit

In collaboration with The Dais India, EMERGE, BITSMUN Goa, and iGEM Manipal Biomachines, we organized the first-ever national-level iGEM India BioSummit 2020 on 25th July 2020. The BioSummit focused on an interdisciplinary interaction for synthetic biology along with its relevance and impact value in the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. Our keynote speakers were Georgios Kostakos, Executive Director, FOGGS; Sudha Reddy, Founder, Eco Foundation for Sustainable Alternatives; and Varsha Jaisimha iGEM Asia Ambassador 2020, India. More information can be found on our collaborations page here.

Podcasts and Interviews

We collaborated with the iGEM Pittsburg team for their podcast to talk about iGEM and synthetic biology. The goal of their podcast is to shine the light on current iGEM teams and their progress so far. Each podcast episode is conversational and accessible to a general audience. We also appeared on a live podcast, ‘Charlas In Silico’, by the iGEM Barcelona team and to talk about our experience as iGEMers.

Figure 3: iGEM BITS Goa featuring in the Bluetooth Bacteria podcast by iGEM Pittsburgh

Figure 4: iGEM BITS Goa featuring in the Charlas In Silico podcast by iGEM Barcelona

CTE Synthetic Biology Course

Along with the Centre for Technical Education of our university, we were able to start an exclusive course on synthetic biology for the undergraduate students. Our course attempts to provide an introduction to bioengineering and describe the various engineering principles used therein. Rather than approaching the subject from a purely biological perspective, this course introduces a multidisciplinary approach that covers physics, mathematics, computer science and even economics. Most importantly, however, the objective of this course is to show that the domain of engineering is ubiquitous and wide-ranging, and not just limited to conventional areas; besides, it also covers how the sciences have been able to benefit from the applications of engineering in their areas.

Humans of iGEM

Humans of New York is a photoblog committed to sharing stories that bring people closer together. Inspired by Humans of New York, we started the Humans of iGEM series.
Amidst the disconnect caused by the pandemic, we started Humans of iGEM to help teams connect by hearing each other's stories and sharing their own. Humans of iGEM is a series of interviews with participants and after-iGEM ambassadors born out of the idea that everyone in iGEM has a story and it is our job to make sure these stories are told. We've interviewed several teams and after-iGEM ambassadors, and published the articles on a Medium blog which you can read here.

During the course of planning for Humans of iGEM, we met up with Yoshi (iGEM Ambassador for USA - West Coast). Yoshi currently organines the after iGEM podcast initiative. He was instrumental in helping us streamline our process and questions. He also gave us extremely valuable inputs on how we could expand our efforts to different languages. Following the meeting with Yoshi, we met with the iGEM UANL team. They were incredibly supportive and were excited to continue the Humans of iGEM initiative with the LatAm teams.