Outreach

iGEM Toronto’s Outreach team focused on communicating the Mystiphage project to audiences beyond academia and supporting Human Practices initiatives. The team managed social media, produced the Project Promotion Video and Presentation Video, designed the team wiki, and organized the biotech Mentorship Program, which connects undergraduate students with professionals in protein engineering, computational biology, and synthetic biology.

Promotion, Presentation Video, and Wiki

Why hand-drawn visuals?

The videos feature hand-drawn animation to make complex scientific concepts accessible and engaging. Each team member focused on a specific subteam, ensuring clarity and accurate representation of the interdisciplinary work. The Promotion Video highlights MystiPhage’s generative AI and hardware innovations, while the Presentation Video showcases stakeholder feedback cycles, including Dr. Steffanie Strathdee’s story, illustrating the global impact of antimicrobial resistance and phage therapy. Sections of the Promotion Video were also used in Entrepreneurship pitches and Human Practices outreach.

Why are we as an AI team not using AI visuals?

We sought hand-drawn animation in a time of AI-generated visuals to let more of our members’ voices seep into our work. Although it could be more cost-effective, our members desired to train in the skill of drawing. Mystiphage uses AI to create a solution; Outreach doesn’t draw with AI, as hand-drawn art is an already existing solution.

Social Media

Social media content, primarily delivered through Instagram, was tailored to broader audiences, emphasizing accessible science communication and timely engagement around the Jamboree, moving away from highly technical posts to reach those unfamiliar with laboratory practices.

Team Social

Team socials bring iGEM Toronto to life outside the lab. They give members a chance to relax, get to know one another, and strengthen connections across divisions. These gatherings help build trust and make collaboration easier, turning a large, multidisciplinary team into a more connected community — one that communicates better and works together more smoothly throughout the season.

Interdisciplinary Collaborations

Early in our project cycle, our team had the opportunity to collaborate with other biomedical design teams at the University of Toronto. We helped host a neuroengineering hackathon, “NeuroHack 2025” with the Club for Undergraduate Biomedical Engineering (CUBE), where we brought together industry partners to assist in the judging process. In collaboration with Neurotech University of Toronto, to spearheaded a prosthetic arm workshop where we brought forward our hardware expertise. In collaboration with the Molecular Genetics Student Union, we judged their therapeutic commercialization hackathon. We brought forward members from our team, who were not all from entrepreneurship, who have extensive biotech startup expertise, to explain the core fundamentals of entrepreneurship in the biotechnology industry.