Team:BIOTEC Dresden/Outreach v2

In our community outreach program we cooperated with a local high school – the St. Benno-Gymnasium Dresden – and invited a group of 13 students aged 11 to 18 to our iGEM lab. We believe this program was beneficial for all involved. For most students this was their first contact to the profession of science. Learning about science in the setting of iGEM is fun and can motivate interested youth to develop their scientific skills. The very least we achieved is to illustrate the importance of proficient communication in English to the global citizen of tomorrow.

We encouraged our visitors to ask any questions they might have. And ask they did. The students showed a remarkable talent to inquire all essential problems of the matter. Explaining our project to them reminded us of the “big picture” and provided us with new perspectives.

It was a long time ago that we visited the biotec, but for me it was really interesting and I remember a lot of the things we saw. It was a very new view on everyday things. What can we build if we go in so little and small parts of an element? Although it impressed me to see the way how you fixed some problems like the gene-timer and stuff like that. I'm really excited to see the future development of your great idea and maybe the first usage of a technology based on your great inventions.

I wish your team a very interesting and successful presentation of your stunning ideas =) Leo Käßner

The biotechnology lab we visited was a really international company. The students who came from Russia, India and other countries were very friendly although they seemed to have to work a lot. They patiently showed and explained to us what they were searching for, and we -silly average pupils- smiled, nodded and tried to understand everything. We did learn that the English language is able to bring people together. Matthias Bellmann

Visiting the science lab offered the rare opportunity to catch a glimpse on the practical application of what is usually dealt with in rather abstract biology lessons. Yet it was striking to see how standard procedures, such as “running a gel” that, due to a lack of facilities, can’t be executed at school, but are frequently talked about, are done. This doesn’t only include having the chance to fiddle around with expensive high-tech devices, but the researchers also made a great effort to break down their project to simple-minded high school students. Although the real-world application of a nano-factory on a chip seems far off to most of us, it is precisely the drive to research without a narrowly-fixed goal that provided an interesting insight into the philosophy of these researchers. Richard Pollack

Fund raising in Leipzig

On 26th of May 2009, the Biotechnology Symposium took place in Leipzig, and the Dresden iGEM team came along to socialize, introduce themselves and have some fun. The main program was conducted by Prof. Stewart, Dr. Schäffer and Dr. Beyer from BIOTEC / Technical University of Dresden and Prof. Blessing and Dr. Züchner from BBZ.

This series of events is geared towards presenting new develpoments of biotechnological research to the community. The talks covered topics from stem cell therapy over applications of microRNA in the research of cellular signal traffic to biophysical developments.

The BIOTEC_Dresden iGEM team also came along to pitch the project ideas to participating scientists and companies. The novel ideas concerning a cell free system with active transcriptional-translational system were well received and some interesting points discussed.

In the end, not only knowledge and publicity for iGEM was obtained, but also some agreements about financial support. A very successful day in Leipzig.