Team:Calgary/Outreach/TEDxCalgary

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TEDxCalgary

This year our team had the opportunity to partner with TedxCalgary in developing a Ted talk which we will be presenting October 13th in Calgary. We think this will be a great opportunity to present to not only our city, but also a part of a larger, international event (City 2.0). We had a lot of fun thinking about synthetic biology and our project and the best way to share that in a relevant and meaningful way.

UofC City 2.0 Picture.png

"Ideas Worth Sharing"

In accordance with Ted's logo, we

In accordance with Ted’s mandate, we needed an idea worth spreading. We had a lot of ideas about our project, the iGEM competition and synthetic biology in general. The hard part was coming up with the right theme for our presentation; one that would resonate with the general public both within and outside Alberta. One of the reasons we chose the project that we did is that it is something important to Alberta but that can also have implications around the globe – environment and energy. There are obvious implications of our project for the oil sands in Alberta, but also to a broader audience in terms of environmental remediation. This was clearly an important theme to us. We felt that the fact that the bacteria we are desigining not only remediate wastes, but can convert them into reusable fuels was particularly important. Every day, the landfills around the world have been growing incessantly. Communicating the potential for applying synthetic biology to clean or recycle the wastes and reclaim these lands would be an interesting focus. What is more exciting is the potential this gives to maintain a self-sustainable environment using this technology. Instead of relying on the city for energy and waste processing, we could use synthetic biology to generate our own energy from waste products.

City 2.0

Our talk will be part of. City 2.0 is an awarding winning event that will occur concurrentlly in over 40 cities around the world on October 13th. This event is inspired by many ideas around building better cities, but is trying to move on to the next step: taking action. The themes involve Art, Food, Education, Public Space, Health and more! The ultimate goal is to create the city of the future “inclusive, innovative, healthy, soulful, and thriving!”

Find our talk after Jamboree at TEDxCalgary website: [1]