Innovative educational tools and outreach activities have the ability to establish a two-way dialogue with new communities by discussing public values and the science behind synthetic biology.
The Baltimore Biocrew 2025’s education endeavor was three fold, the first educational endeavor of the team was to create bacterial transformation classes to get children who were interested in science more connected to the synthetic biology community and iGEM so they can use the skills taught to them in class to kickstart their synthetic biology endeavors. In these classes we aimed to teach children about basic lab techniques such as pipetting and nanodrop, modify an organism through bacterial transformation and make a short presentation about what they did and learned to present in front of their parents. This would give the students a comprehensive introduction to, and a head start in synthetic biology. Unfortunately due to logistical issues we were unable to hold any such classes. Hopefully this will inspire a future team and they will succeed where we did not.
Innovative educational tools and outreach activities have the ability to establish a two-way dialogue with new communities by discussing public values and the science behind synthetic biology. How have you developed new opportunities to include more people in shaping synthetic biology? Education activities do not have to be directly related to your project but may look at wider issues of iGEM or synthetic biology. Education activities must promote scientific learning and avoid simply proselytizing or marketing synthetic biology and/or iGEM. Document your approach, and what was learned by everyone involved, to compete for this award.
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