SynBio101: Summer Camp

SynBio101: Summer Camp was Team RUM-UPRM’s main educational effort that lasted a week long. On Friday, we presented our project to the students participating in the experience. We started by explaining the problem and our reasons to focus on the contamination of Vieques. The presentation also included the different efforts and initiatives we designed to incorporate as Human Practices. We also showed the genetic circuits we had up until that moment, along with our rough ideas of the hardware. This presentation was very successful to us because we wanted to show them how to present an original project, which they were doing the next day, and to open a free discussion of our project. This format allowed us to see their new, fresh, and different points of view, and incorporate them into our project. During the year, we offered presentations to various settings and audiences about Synthetic Biology and our possible solution for Vieques, but these were very limited to an open discussion due to the formats of these forums. With the high schoolers, we were able to open our project to critiques and suggestions, especially in the Human practices initiatives and hardware.

The students started by questioning different areas of the project they did not understand, which made us rethink and modify our approach to explain the genetic circuit and its function, and to focus more on the specific contaminants in Vieques. In the Human Practices area, they suggested talking to local stakeholders that had worked before in Vieques. Another recommendation was to present and educate more the Puertorican people on Synthetic Biology, not just academia since this is a science that benefits the whole population. They also asked what we were doing to make sure people with differing needs could understand Synthetic Biology, pointing out the importance of including communities with disadvantages to our conversations. These recommendations became different initiatives like the collaboration with the University’s Association of Sign Language (AUSL) and graduate student PhD-MD Ian DeAndrea-Lazarus. In the Engineering aspects, the students presented concrete ideas and suggestions for our hardware, including what it should do and look. This enthusiastic reaction from the students inspired us to create and design the Bioreactor Design for Synthetic Biology Applications Competition. To learn more about our SynBio101: Summer Camp click here.