This blog is where we share stories, announcements, and insights from around the iGEM community.
All tagged iGEM Digest Issue 04
iGEM is many things, but here’s one that matters a lot to me: iGEM is an invitation. For many people, in many places around the world, an encounter with an iGEM team will be their first encounter with synthetic biology. The work that iGEM teams do to make synthetic biology accessible and understandable is an invitation extended: come, join us, tell us what matters to you. Let’s change the world together.
“What do you think of when I say engineering?,” asks Mr. David Doyle, lead instructor for the Shanghai United International School (SUIS) iGEM Team. Students typically respond with areas such as electrical, industrial, or computer engineering, but do not make the connection between engineering and biology.
As we found out explaining a synthetic biology project was not an easy task. The field itself is an integration of disciplines, and relies heavily on metaphors to make it more understandable. In areas where the boundaries between disciplines are a bit bold, it is a challenge to explain the disciplinary overlap that exists within and through Synthetic Biology. But beyond that, we noticed that there is a bigger challenge and that lies in the language, the one which makes the spoken be easily heard.
During iGEM 2017, the pages were so popular that we created the “Meme of the week” challenge, where iGEMers could submit memes and the best one would win the honour of being posted the following Monday. For a short period, iGEM Memes even had more followers on Instagram than iGEM HQ!
It is my privilege to serve as guest editor for iGEM Digest, and former iGEM instructor. I hope the Digest will help recruit new students and mentors to form future teams, serve as a platform to share both success stories and resources to overcome challenges, demonstrate how iGEM can be career-changing or in some cases career-defining, and to remind us that science should be driven by the outward motivation of benefiting others.
