Team:EPF-Lausanne/Human Project

This part of the project is to communicate the research of the EPFL iGEM team, in the context of synthetic biology. The major challenge of this project is to get over the gap between scientific researches and science communication. That's why we are trying to inform people on what we are doing, mainly by giving interviews and writing articles for some newspapers. However, we are also trying to built some conferences and talks, to scientifics and to general public.

Human Practices explores how synthetic biology might inform safety, security, health, and ethics through the new constructs engeneered by synthetic biology. It also observes the repercussions on economy, politics, and culture resulting from adavances in synthetic biology.

A first part of our work was to share our research to general public, as to scientists. That's why the following section summarizes what we did.

Talks

Talks

• Going to our respective high school to give a talk about synthetic biology.

- Heidi will contact her biology professor to see if it is possible to give a talk to a class there.

- We have a contact with Ms Aminian, at the Burier high school, to give a talk to some students in biology and chemistry option. We plan to go there on Friday 25th of September and on Wednesday 30th of September.

• A comic? See this page to see a funny comics.

• During our study trip in Singapour, we presented our iGEM project during a symposium at Singapour general hospital. Here is the presentation.

Surveys

We plan to do a survey on two aspects of ethics and biology :

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

- Have the opinion of people on whether they think the human have the right to manipulate genes etc

[Survey]

Media Work

We try to contact a great number of newspapers to speak of our project on the one hand, and on synthetic bioogy on the other hand. The final aim is to inform people, so they can get over understand better what is hidden behind the words "synthetic biology", "cloning", or "genetically engeneered" for example.

Below are listed the different newspapaers we were 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 newspapers of the EPFL :

Click here to read the entire Flash

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

We tried to have new interviews, so the following newspapers were contacted:

• Le Matin Dimanche :

Redacteur en chef Michel Danthe : not now...

• Le Matin : Impossible

• Le Temps -----> replied: maybe he will follow us in Boston

Contact: Olivier Dessibourg

Journaliste scientifique

Chef de la rubrique "Société"&"Sciences

• Le Nouvelliste.ch

Rédaction Martigny → we will meet him during September for an interview

• 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