The Education Committee focused on designing and implementing educational activities that addressed scorpionism—its problems, prevention, and treatment—alongside key topics such as synthetic biology and the immune system. Our efforts combined educational and recreational approaches to make complex scientific concepts accessible to diverse audiences.
Throughout our outreach initiatives, we achieved remarkable engagement, reaching over 3,800 participants across nine major activities with near-equal gender representation. Our largest event, the Fourth Mexican Snake Festival, drew approximately 3,000 participants (1,250 men and 1,750 women), demonstrating significant public interest in biodiversity education. The Webinar on Synthetic Biology for Antivenoms attracted over 2,100 attendees (1,050 men and 1,050 women), highlighting the relevance of our research topic to the scientific community and general public alike.
We worked closely with collaborators to organize workshops and exhibitions and actively participated in local, regional, and national events. Notable activities included the Night of the Stars (reaching approximately 500 people), the CUC Batik Workshop on Benita Galeana (approximately 150 participants), an Environmental Conference (around 350 attendees), Texcoco and rallies (approximately 300 participants), and the Biotechnology Without Borders initiative (reaching a small but engaged audience). As part of these initiatives, we developed two educational games: an interactive online game that teaches about the immune system and a printable lottery game designed to learn about synthetic biology.
The overarching goal of the Education Committee was to promote scientific literacy among different age groups. More specifically, we aimed to raise awareness about the magnitude of scorpionism in Mexico and its implications, explain the immune system within the context of antibody-based research, and highlight the practical relevance and potential of synthetic biology in everyday life.