Camps, Class and Lectures

1.Hands-on experience summer camp with Qingdao No.2 High School.

This summer, we held a camp with 28 high school students in our university. Our goal was to motivate their interest of bioscience by doing experiments and teach them how to learn by oneself (Internet is a good choice). In this camp, we prepared many experiments about molecular biology, such as miniprep and PCR.

*Why we held this meeting?

We want to let more people know about synthetic biology and pay attention to biosafety. Now, synthetic biology still is a developing subject in China. Many students even haven’t heard about it. As the hard core of developing bioscience and the future of the world, the more knowledge they get, the better the world is. Besides, by sharing our knowledge with them, we trained our skills of talking and understood the concept of synthetic biology with deeper expression.

*What we did in this camp?

In this camp, we gave many classes to participants, such as the principle of PCR, introduction of synthetic biology and iGEM. During the class, we shared the concept of iGEM and standard and let more students have interests on synthetic biology. In addition to classes, we also teach them to do molecular experiments, such as miniprep and PCR. By this means, we trained our experiment and communication skills. We also stressed the importance of safety, including researcher safety, public safety, or environmental safety. At the end of this camp, we gave out a questionnaire and analyzed their answers.

Teaching the principle of PCRTeaching the experiment of miniprep

Here are the questionnaires and analysis:

2.2th summer camp of life science and technology

*Why we held this camp?

Last year, we held 1st summer camp of life science and technology. Through this camp, most of the participants (many of them are OUC iGEMers) had developed their interests in synthetic biology and iGEM. After that, we studied molecular biology and introduction to synthetic biology by ourselves. This year, we become OUC-China 2012 iGEMers.
So, aiming at educating new iGEMers for OUC-China, we introduced synthetic biology and iGEM during this camp. Besides, hoping they can appreciate the beauty of nature and learn more far from books, we made a sea investigation in this camp. We love synthetic biology because we love where we live!

A poster of students in this camp

*What did we do during this camp?

After one year in university, most participants had learned botany and zoology. To build the general system of biology, we taught them biochemistry and did some microbiology experiments. Now, biology has many subjects and many new disciplines emerge endlessly. To make more new disciplines known to them, we held a lecture during this camp to introduce bioinformatics, system biology and of course, synthetic biology.

3.Winter camp for brain storming

*Brain storming in winter vacation with professors

During winter vacation, we went back school early to brain storm. During the ten days’ camp, every iGEMers in our team read papers, speak out what they leant in winter vacation, talked about ideas and communicate with professors together. In our lab, we were enjoying the joy of science and exploration.

Brainstorming with professors

Living and working with each other for ten days was an inspiring experience for 2012 OUC-iGEMers. This was the first time for our team to get the feeling of being a true researcher and to use our own imagination to create things that we have never dreamed of before. Being fully absorbed in expressing our ideas with the most terrific teammates is something that a young person just has to experience!

4.Popularization of bioscience with young kids

In June, participants from the 2012 iGEM teams joined a multitude of presentations to expand the knowledge of No.39 middle school’s students in the general sciences. Presentations included marine biology, bioengineering, introduction to biology and so on. Besides we prepared various interactive sessions for students to learn and practice experimental skills. We also displayed our work on the ‘Wu Xing’ system in 2011 iGEM and ratio sensor in this summer. Through this process, students could be exposed to recent scientific research.

Minghao Gong is communicating with young kids

5.Introduce our project to professors and students in our university.

During winter vacation, we had a brainstorming and our idea was settled during April. To make iGEM and our project known in our university, we made a presentation to introduce our project to who are interested in our project, including professors and students.
Last year, OUC-China iGEM Team got a bronze medal in Asia Jamboree. It attracted many students to learn about synthetic biology and iGEM. Many students are curious about synthetic biology and its concept. As iGEMers, we wanted to use an example to explain iGEM and synthetic biology. Since we have our own idea and needed a test, we made a presentation to introduce iGEM and our idea to others.

Describe our project to others

Lecture of iGEM in OUC

In April, we have the honor to meet with Haoqian Zhang and Shuobing Chen, the former and current iGEM team leader of Peking University respectively. We displayed multitude of brainstormed ideas in the last winter vacation and make a deep discussion with them. Through this process, we further understood the core thinking pattern and application of synthetic biology. They are very kind and ready to help us along with the coming 2012 iGEM competition. Here we express our sincere appreciations to Peking iGEM team. Finally, we invited them to perform a presentation named ‘research-driven education’ which embodied their brand-new concepts on the relation between education and scientific research. Besides, they displayed their team’s work from 2007-2011 and the joy and sorrow along the inheriting process. We not only expanded our knowledge from their lectures, but deeply recognized our responsibility to inherit and spread the edge-cutting knowledge as well as concepts to those ready to achieve their goals in scientific research. We’re ready to assume the responsibility to impel the education reform. Are you ready?

A group photo after this lecture