Education
Core Issues
- Public perception of sweeteners is predominantly focused on artificial ones like aspartame;
- A stereotypical belief exists that natural rare sugars (e.g., D-allulose) pose "health risks";
- Significant differences in needs across age groups: students focus on scientific knowledge, while the elderly are concerned about blood sugar and dietary health.
Educational Objectives
To build a closed-loop science communication and education practice system of "Breaking Cognitive Barriers & Co-Creating Value," achieving:
Breaking cognitive misconceptions → Precisely matching needs
Document Overview
Expert Guidance for Capacity Building
Interviews with Professor Xiaoyun Lu and Professor Jianjun Li shaped our educational approach: prioritizing skill development through hands-on training (e.g., AI-integrated design) and emphasizing market-driven strategies with patent protection. These insights helped us transform technical optimization into interdisciplinary problem-solving training and adopt precise science communication tailored to different audiences.
Multifaceted Health Outreach
We implemented integrated health services, combining science communication, services, research, and policy feedback, across six provinces. Three micro-lectures ("Scientific Diet", "Chronic Disease Prevention", and "Early Cancer Screening") were delivered to elderly communities, with over 40 sessions reaching 1,000+ participants. These efforts raised awareness of chronic diseases and healthy sweeteners, with findings contributing to local health systems.
Campus Engagement and Insights
Campus promotions and surveys introduced iGEM and D-allulose to 200 young adults (18-35). Findings showed 70% acceptance of D-allulose, driven by its minimal blood glucose impact and near-zero calories. Beverages were identified as the top application, guiding our product development strategy and improving targeted synthetic biology outreach.
Dual Growth in Education and Team Skills
Through public engagement and internal collaboration, we built integrated competencies in research, communication, and social service. Designing multi-generational content improved our ability to simplify complex science, while public feedback refined project design, incorporating enzyme safety and user experience considerations. This established a closed-loop model of "learning through service, optimizing through outreach".
Primary Coverage
Interview with Professor Lu Xiaoyun
Professor Xiaoyun Lu, Department of Biotechnology, School of Life Science and Technology. We talked with Prof. Lu. We exchanged a lot of key issues about how to make students' independent innovation projects go from the laboratory to the society, as well as the personal growth we need to pay attention to when realizing the value of the project, which helped us solve some key thinking misunderstandings.
She mentioned: The project's value lies in fostering genuine skill development through hands-on practice (such as AI-integrated design) rather than short-term social benefits. While current technological achievements like enzyme activity optimization remain limited, the accumulated experience can be transferred to future fields like protein design, which represents the potential long-term societal value. Internally, team members use optimization techniques as training vehicles to accumulate AI design expertise; externally, they refine educational innovations (such as "cross-disciplinary problem-solving competency cultivation").
This greatly inspired our project promotion, more cohesion of the team, clear goals.
Interview with Professor Li Jianjun
Professor Jianjun Li, Institute of Biomedical Analytical Technology and Instrument, School of Life Science & Technology. Prof. Li emphasized that successful translation of academic research into real-world applications hinges on market-driven design from the outset. Unlike curiosity-driven pure research, applied projects must prioritize market needs to guide goals, methods, and economic viability. Critical factors include ensuring scalability (simplifying lab processes for industrial use) and rigorous cost-profit analysis (accounting for hidden expenses like labor, maintenance, and taxes). Equally vital is patent protection for core technologies. She emphasized that commercialization requires holistic planning, integrating market research, cost control, technical execution, and IP strategy, with each team role contributing equally to success.
To address public concerns about emerging technologies (e.g., synthetic biology), Prof. Li recommended audience-tailored communication: highlight "necessity" via policy/market evidence while avoiding overemphasis on sensitive terms like "GMO"; prepare unified, concise explanations for different stakeholders. Regarding student competitions, she valued their role in cultivating end-to-end competencies, such as experimental design, time management, teamwork, and impactful presentation, noting that post-competition persistence (e.g., refining projects, seeking industry partnerships) maximizes learning. Her core advice to students: "perseverance" transforms process-driven efforts into tangible growth or commercialization opportunities, regardless of immediate outcomes.
Layered Engagement: Conducting "Multi-Generational Barrier-Breaking" Education
Reaching the Elderly: Health Education for the "Silver Generation"
To effectively advance the China's National Health Strategy, the team has implemented comprehensive health service practices centered around four key components: "Science Communication-Services-Research-Policy Recommendations".
Science Communication: In developing science communication content, the team combined biotechnology expertise with the health needs of middle-aged and elderly populations to create three core educational resources: first, the "Scientific Diet • Healthy Later Years" micro-classroom, which explains knowledge about balanced nutrition and dietary combinations to help seniors develop healthy eating habits; second, the "Chronic Disease Prevention • Starting from Action" micro-classroom, addressing common chronic conditions like hypertension and diabetes by disseminating prevention, monitoring, and treatment knowledge; third, the "Cancer Prevention & Detection" micro-classroom, introducing early cancer screening methods and scientific prevention strategies to enhance elderly awareness. Concurrently, the team conducted specialized lectures on "Scientific Diabetes Management" through research projects, providing detailed explanations of diabetes causes, symptoms, dietary restrictions, and exercise recommendations to address health concerns of particular concern to older adults.
Services: In implementing health services, the team conducted face-to-face outreach in communities and senior care centers. They visited institutions including Xi 'an Beilin District Third Charity Nursing Home. Through lectures, interactive Q&A sessions, and personalized consultations, they educated seniors about health knowledge. At Beilin District Nursing Home, the team not only delivered diabetes prevention lectures but also measured blood pressure and documented health records for residents. At Tiantianju Nursing Home, they engaged in warm conversations to understand medication routines and dietary habits, offering tailored health advice. By the project's conclusion, the team conducted 40+ health education sessions, reaching >1,000 participants by project completion.
Research: We organized seven teams of 48 students to conduct health education campaigns in communities and senior care centers across multiple locations, including Xi 'an (Shaanxi), Shenzhen (Guangdong), Yancheng (Jiangsu), Hangzhou (Zhejiang), Hechi (Guangxi), and Shenyang (Liaoning). During interactive sessions, team members engaged with seniors through patient conversations, exploring their dietary habits, understanding of diabetes management, and knowledge about sugar substitutes.
Policy Recommendations: This initiative enhanced elderly participants' awareness of diabetes, collected health and nutrition questionnaires, analyzed data to form research reports, and contributed to advancing the development of elderly healthcare systems.
Engaging the Campus Community
Promotion: We organized team members to set up booths on campus, distributed questionnaires and project posters to introduce the project content to interested students and teachers, and promote the iGEM competition. Then, through some lucky draws, we attracted them to complete the questionnaire designed by us and obtain some research results. We were pleased to find that our classmates and teachers around us had great interest in our project.
Investigation: Meanwhile, we took advantage of this publicity opportunity to conduct a questionnaire survey on them and got the following results. We found that:
Young Demographics Dominate with High Awareness of Traditional Sweeteners: Among the 200 survey respondents, 80% were young adults aged 18-35. Only 10% of respondents reported having never heard of "sugar substitutes" (non-nutritive sweeteners, NNS); most had at least some awareness, and a small subset described themselves as very familiar. Familiarity was highest with xylitol and aspartame, followed by sucralose and erythritol; awareness of D-allulose and stevia/steviol glycosides was comparatively low.
Decision-Making Drivers: Health and Safety are Paramount, Signaling Strong Market Potential: Across all perceived risks of sugar substitutes, respondents prioritized health and overall safety profile, followed by sensory attributes (palatability) and price; brand recognition and other factors were least important. Seventy percent were willing to adopt D-allulose as a new sugar substitute in daily life, most of them indicating unequivocal support, 20% were neutral, and 10% were unwilling, including 4% who were firmly opposed.
Product Positioning: Functional Benefits are Key, with Beverages as the Preferred Application: The most attractive features of D-allulose were its minimal impact on blood glucose, followed by its near-zero caloric value; its sucrose-like taste was noted but ranked after the first two attributes. Regarding application scenarios, beverages were the most welcomed use case, followed by baked desserts; snack foods and functional foods were least favored.
Closing the Loop and Evolving: From Practical Data to Future Strategy
Our educational practice is not the end goal of our activities, but rather a starting point that drives continuous project optimization and value creation.
Data Integration: From Scattered Insights to a Unified Picture
The campus demographic showed greater receptiveness to new products and a higher acceptance of allulose, while the elderly population had little prior exposure. This group was less concerned with the "technology" and more focused on "blood sugar" and "health."
Strategic Evolution: Data-Driven Co-Creation of Value
Optimization of Science Communication Strategy:
For the student demographic, content will focus on "AI enzyme design and sustainable manufacturing."
For the elderly demographic, the messaging will emphasize a "delicious choice with zero glycemic impact," ensuring information is precisely targeted.
Team Growth: Core Value Beyond the Competition
Ultimately, the most significant evolution arising from this closed loop is the transformation of our team itself. As emphasized by Professor Xiaoyun Lu regarding the value of "cultivating talent," planning and executing this comprehensive set of Human Practices activities has provided us with far more than just data and reports. Each member has experienced unprecedented growth in project planning, cross-cultural communication, data analysis, and public speaking.
In conclusion, our educational practice has formed a perfect value loop------From Social Service to Personal Growth. This perfectly embodies our core philosophy of "Breaking Cognitive Barriers & Co-Creating Value."