Team:EPF-Lausanne/Human Project

Introduction

Aim

The aim of this part of the project is to communicate about the research done by the EPFL iGEM team, in the context of synthetic biology. The major challenge here is to overcome the existing gap between scientific research and how the general public sees and interprets it. Indeed, we observed that many people are afraid of the words cloning, GMO, or biotechnology, and this without them knowing exactly what they stand for. There seems to be a communication problem between scientists and the people from other fields, and this is reflected for example in votation results here in Switzerland. Our aim is not to convince that scientific research in Life Sciences is harmless, but we want to inform the public, to enable them to form their own opinion on the subject.

How

The first part of the project consisted in talking with different people, to understand what they think, fear and know about synthetic biology. To achieve this we conducted a survey and when to some high schools to talk to young students. Another aspect of our human practices project is to inform people about what we are doing and what iGEM is about. This was done mainly through interviews and articles in some newspapers. We are also gave several talks, as well to scientists as to the general public.

Human Practices explore how synthetic biology meets issues in safety, security, health, and ethics through the design of novel engineered constructs. This field also studies the repercussions that advances in synthetic biology might have on economy, politics, and culture.

The following sections will give you an overview of the initiatives that have been undertaken by our team to try to answer some of the questions raised above.

Talks

We went to some high schools to do a presentation to high school students. We first gave them the survey to have their opinion, and then we did a short presentation about synthetic biology. The idea was to interact with some young people that are potentially interested in our field (they all had taken the physics-math or biology-chemistry specialisation), but without special knowledge about it. We wanted first of all to inform them about some fields of biology and gave them the example of our project. We listened to their feelings about cloning, biotechnology and genetic engineering. After our presentation, we gave them a little time so they could ask more specific questions about what scientific research is about etc.

In order to do this, we took contact with Ms Aminian, a chemistry high school teacher in Burier. We went to give a talk on Wednesday September 30th and on Friday October 2nd to 4 different classes (about 100 students in total). These students were between 14-16 years of age, and therefore didn't have any special knowledge in the field.

We also had a contact in Valais, and we gave a talk there on October 2nd as well, to about 40 students. These students were a bit older, in average 18-19 years old, and they had already had biology classes for 5 years, so this presentation was of a more advanced level.

During our study trip in Singapour, we presented our iGEM project during a symposium at the Singapore General Hospital, to various doctors, professors and students from the facility and affiliated to it. Here is the presentation. The people attending the symposium were mostly researchers of the hospital and our class colleagues (about 70 people).

We also went on a visit trip to the Merck Serono (EMD Serono) site in Corsier-sur-Fenil (near Vevey), on October 9th. There we gave a short talk about our project, had the possibility to interact with some researchers. Finally, we had the opportunity to visit the site and got a chance to see their bioreactors.

A comic with nice illustration : See this page for a funny comics.

Survey

We sent out a survey to try to answer questions mainly about the following two aspects of biology and ethics :

- Association of the level of knowledge with the feelings towards synthetic biology

- Opinion of people on whether they think humans have the right to manipulate genes, and similar issues

Here is the Survey

Media Work

In order to give more visibility to iGEM and to present the novel field of synthetic biology, we contacted several newspapers to speak about our project and the context in which it is being conducted. Our main goal here is to inform people, to give them a better understanding of what is hidden behind the words and expressions such as "synthetic biology", "cloning", or "genetical engineering".

Below are listed the newspapers we have been in touch with:

24H and La Tribune de Genève

An interview of one member of our team was published along with an article about our project in two broadly read papers of our region : 24 heures and La Tribune de Genève. Link to the article :

Article

Interview

Flash

Article in the Flash, which is the internal newspaper of the EPFL :

Click here to read the entire Flash

Click here to read only our article, called "Bricolage biologique"

We tried to obtain other interviews, so the following newspapers were contacted:

• Le Matin Dimanche :

Redacteur en chef Michel Danthe : not now...

• Le Matin : Impossible

• Le Temps

Contact: Olivier Dessibourg

Journaliste scientifique

Chef de la rubrique "Société"&"Sciences

A member of our team was interviewed on October 9th. We also provided Mr. Dessibourg with some references. Article coming soon...

• Le Nouvelliste.ch

Rédaction Martigny → two members of our team were interviewed on October 1st. Link to the article : coming soon...

• 20 Minutes

→ relancé

Communication

We contacted Ariane Vlerick at the EPFL (Coordinatrice Communication de SV) → we are now in contact with :

• the Mediacom Service of EPFL (Jérome Grosse and Frédéric Rauss) → will provide us a help in order to explain our projet in different media
• projet Portes Ouvertes (Alain Herzog)
• presentation in gymnases (Maya Fruehauf)

A high school student followed us during one week
→ here is a short article on his experience during this week