Team:UCL London/Engagement

Public Engagements

iGEM is not just about the lab work, public engagement forms a significant part of our work. As part of our engagement, we have engaged in multiple ativities from roaming the streets of london to having stalls at important fairs and conferences. The real advantage of this is to make sure that everybody in the world around you knows and understand that projects such as ours exist and to give them a real insight into the our efforts and ambitions.

Public Engagement 1 - The Streets

Thursday 26th August

Today was a real opportunity for us to hit the streets of London and really get an insight glimpse of what the public's perception of such projects and such technology was. We planned our route in such a way that we limited the bias in our engagement and reached out to people of all ages and of all disciplines. We started of at UCL itself, before heading over to SOAS, School of Oriental and African Studies. The people their tend lot more open minded and it was great to get their opinions. Following that, we visited the British Museum, a taxi cabin, a Church in Charing Cross and so overall, we interviewed many individuals ranging from toursists, worshippers, taxi drivers etc.

Some of the interviews have been included in the linked below, and to participate in such an event where we roamed the streets of London asking people's views on synthetic biology and gene manipulation was a great and interesting insight, and we understand its importance as a technique to help bridge the relationship between science and the public, especially when ethics is a major constituent of scientific developments.

Public Engagement 2 - University of London Open Day

Thursday 26th August

The University of London Undergraduate Open Days are rorganised by The Careers Group and provide a great opportunity for prospective students to gain an insight into what it would be like to study one of the many institutes and colleges that make up the University of London. With that in mind, we understood the importance of making use of this great opportunity and so we managed to put together a stall.

Public Engagement 3 - University College London Freshers' Fayre

Thursday 3th September - Friday 1st October

Onion Article

Debating Society presents - THE CONTROVERSY BEHIND SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY

After a lot of effort, we have managed to organise a debate about Synthetic Biology and will be hosted by UCL's Debating Society. This will take place some time towards the end of October and will be a great chance for us to really get to grips with the ethical side of our project. This is bound to raise many issues and it'll be interseting to see how we got about fighting back!

The main issues that will be discussed are:

1. Is Synthetic Biology going to collapse like GMO's did in the 1990's 2. What solutions can Synthetic biology bring to the ordinary individual 3. How do you justify such technology