Human Practices Overview

Let us start with a great story. In late November 2011 we gave a conference about Synthetic Biology (SynBio) and iGEM in Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo de Educación Bilingüe (CIDEB) high school, which turned out fabulous. Students who attended the talk became so interested in SynBio that they wanted to participate in iGEM. Their school's principal was also enthusiastic about the idea and did not hesitate in supporting a team. So we gave them an intensive SynBio workshop and coached them all along the competition. You may have heard of that team. They came 2nd runner-up and had lots of fun.

We were excited about educating people on the SynBio. We continued the Jr. high school visits and personally introduced SynBio to more than 700 students. The collaboration with team CIDEB-UANL was also very good. Together, we had a group of Jr. high school students participate in an enjoyable synthetic rally. We also arranged a poster exhibition, were CIDEB-UANL, iGEMUANL-2011 and other participants presented their works.

But we noticed we had to educate ourselves as well. We started a math model course for undergraduates in our school, where around 40 students and we greatly improved our mathematical skills. The Bio! blog was also a very effective way of spreading SynBio news to undergraduates and graduates interested in SynBio. And let's not forget the iGEM history database, where we compiled all iGEM college projects to date.

Finally, we decided to go massive with SynBio education through the Synbio Tunnel. We built the SynBio Tunnel, an interactive museum-like exhibition about SynBio, and received around 2,000 attendees. We were also invited to take it to a 5,000 people science divulgation event. As part of its inauguration, we invited the President of the Mexican Association for Synthetic Biology, M.Sc. Geronimo Villanueva, to give a talk about the current situation of SynBio in Mexico. All together, it was a once in a life-time experience.

Feel free to browse the details in the right sidebar!