Team:Stanford-Brown/Outreach/MakerFaire

Bay Area Maker Faire

On May 19th and May 20th, 2012, Stanford-Brown iGEM went to the San Mateo Maker Faire! Among the robots and the fiery explosions and the giant Tesla coils, we had the chance to share synthetic biology and our projects with the general public. Along with a poster presentation that fascinated onlookers, we had a do-it-yourself strawberry DNA extraction activity that was a hit with kids and adults alike. Everyone could take home a few milliliters of strawberry DNA in an eppendorf after a short and fun 3-minute procedure!

Not many of our attendees knew much about biology. Those who did were concerned about the possibility of cross-contamination between planets and uncontrolled use of our devices in the environment. These are definitely important bioethical points we should consider in human practices and our overall work in the lab. Everyone did seem really impressed with what we are doing, and were excited about the possibilities of synthetic biology in space!

We had a great time sharing synbio at Maker Faire in San Mateo; we hope to make another appearance at the Maker Faire in New York in the fall, so stay tuned!

New York Maker Faire

On September 29 and 30, our team went to NY Maker Faire. We again had a strawberry DNA extraction setup, which was very popular among kids and adults alike. We put out a poster, asking "What kind of organism would you engineer?" and got some funny / crazy / reasonable answers, including: vampire bunnies, flying bananas, flying kitties, dragons, unicorns, people without aging, Pikachu, and Tardis. We additionally displayed our poster and explained our iGEM project to curious fairgoers.