Education

At Aalto-Helsinki, we believe that education lies at the foundation of society. We want to emphasize the importance of our work with regard to providing learning opportunities. We do not simply wish to raise awareness without a proper understanding of our goals and means, but rather, we aim to create a thorough and deep comprehension of our project. Moreover, we try to focus on creating an environment that allows for creative, innovative feedback; for a lot of us, inspiring more science is a big motivator.

Workshops

Heureka workshops

Aalto-Helsinki has had the honor of collaborating with Heureka, a science center, for many years. Heureka attracts approximately 300 000 visitors a year and has many thrilling and engaging exhibitions with the aim of interesting the public to learn more about different areas of science and develop scientific understanding through the joy of discovery. Education is incredibly important to our team, and we want to do our best to spread our enthusiasm for synthetic biology to others. Over two Saturdays, Aalto-Helsinki continued our traditional collaboration with the ABOA team by holding a workshop on synthetic biology at Heureka, in which we covered the topics of protein synthesis and DNA.

In the first workshop, we taught the public about DNA, RNA, and amino acids by playing a DNA flash card game. This was followed by giving Heureka visitors DNA/RNA/amino acid models to build while showing educational videos of protein synthesis and providing guidance throughout the process. The visitors learned about the structure of DNA while building, and learned how RNA differs while constructing RNA models. The RNA model had spectacular tRNA and amino acid pieces that would be attached in such a way that the model represents the actual translation process very well. At the end, the visitors deciphered which amino acids the built RNA and tRNA model encoded for. Additionally, they learned some basics about the 20 essential amino acids, protein structures, and the function of hemoglobin as an example protein. We also showed them a game that an Aalto-Helsinki member developed to demonstrate protein synthesis. This game allowed users to input their own DNA code and click through the steps of protein synthesis for a streamlined version of their experience building the models by hand.

After the first workshop, everyone who assisted in instructing gathered to evaluate the workshop and how to improve upon or engage the public more in the second upcoming workshop. We decided that having other hands-on activities would help Heureka visitors actively learn the synthetic biology topics that we guided them through. We decided that pipetting, while a super fun activity, is a vital lab skill to learn and also ties together nicely with how we and others work with DNA in the lab.

During the second workshop, we added cell culture plates, pipettes, and food dye water. Younger visitors were free to be creative and draw pictures on the plates by filling each well with a color of their choosing. Some visitors agreed to learn to perform more difficult tasks such as mixing two colors by pipetting them up and down and emptying many wells in one go by controlling how much they released the air bubble at the top of the pipet. In tandem with the building models, the pipetting, which encouraged creative freedom, also allowed the visitors to be more receptive towards learning difficult-to-grasp topics of DNA/RNA/amino acids and forthcoming regarding questions and inquiries. Witnessing how hard they all worked on their pipetting and how proud they were of their creations afterward was a joy to see. We surely inspired a few future scientists and laboratorians. In many cases, we were surprised by how quickly they picked up the topics and asked insightful questions.

The workshops sparked the interest of kindergarteners who loved pipetting different colors together, students who enjoyed building the models with their own hands, and kids who deepened the knowledge they had previously only read in textbooks or never heard of before. Parents of younger visitors and other adults enjoyed learning more in-depth knowledge about the workings of DNA and amino acids.

Maunula Elementary School workshops

Aalto-Helsinki went to the Maunula elementary school; and to a group of 6th graders, presented iGEM, our team’s project, and a Yeast Air Balloon experiment workshop. This was followed by a synthetic biology pop quiz based on our teachings. The students were interested in learning about our project, asking questions about synthetic biology, and even envisioning further studies.

The students were eager to conduct their own experiment; and after we stressed the importance of keeping good lab notes, they diligently followed our advice on writing their own lab notes and carrying out experiments with care and precision. The students paired up and performed the Yeast Air Balloon experiment by filling a bottle with warm water, yeast, sugar/apple slices and covering the top with an air balloon. As fermentation produced CO₂, the air balloon expanded with the gas. The students were excited to see their balloons standing up and eager to learn more. We then discussed the phenomena, the chemical formula, and possible differences between the bottles filled with sugar and those filled with apple slices.

To wrap up the session, the students took part in a fun pop quiz based on the topics discussed that day. The quiz served both as a summary and as further motivation to learn. This was clear when it sparked discussion on plastic pollution and thoughts on how to combat it.

Presentations

International Biology Olympiad

On the 9th of August, our team visited the students of the training program for the Finnish team for the International Biology Olympiad (IBO). IBO is the largest international biology competition for high school students across the world. In Finland, a selected group of ten talented high schoolers in all fields of biology are trained, and four of them will qualify to represent Finland in the 34th International Biology Olympiad in Astana, Kazakhstan in July 2024.

The iGEM team has been collaborating with the training program for IBO students for quite a long time by organizing a joint meeting. In this meeting, our team presented the project overview. We got highly interesting feedback from a variety of points of view. These brilliant students showed a lot of interest in our process and pointed out many important details.

Additionally, their supervisor gave a brief presentation regarding the International Biology Olympiad process and organization, and right after, in smaller groups, we exchanged experiences regarding our scientific careers. The students shared their plans for the future and asked for advice. They were thrilled to hear about our different paths and learn about the amount of possibilities that they have in front of them. All in all, it was a delightful experience for us, we were able to inspire new generations of scientists who are about to start their own adventure.

Moreover, it was a great activity to familiarize young students with the genetic engineering field. We spread the iGEM values and explored with them the possibilities it offers. Our team considered it a great opportunity to share our experience within this project and bring them closer to the field. iGEM is a very useful tool for educating future scientists in an enjoyable way.

Science Basement

The Science Basement is a non-profit organization in Finland based in Helsinki. They create low-threshold opportunities to encourage and support all researchers to communicate their work, by providing a safe space to learn SciComm skills through their different platforms and projects. The aim is to show that good communication skills can make you a better researcher by uncovering hidden assumptions and reorganizing your ideas about your work, while exploring how to create and improve the dialogue between research and society.

Our team got invited to the afternoon talks. In these events, different researchers present their current work within the talking series as a short presentation, followed by a lively discussion with the audience.

In collaboration with the ABOA iGEM team, two of our members presented our project overview as well as discussed bioremediation, which is included in both of our projects. Afterward, we discussed with the audience in which more members of both groups participated by answering the questions. Both teams received very fruitful feedback and we got to explain our experiences and thoughts regarding our participation in the projects. It was a great opportunity to share with other researchers and a very interested audience about iGEM itself.

University course presentations

In order to spread the iGEM values and advertise them, we organized several presentations both at Aalto University and the University of Helsinki in various courses with suitable topics.

In these presentations, our team not only presented the project overview but also explained the iGEM concept and its values. We shared with the students the mechanism of the whole process and what is required to participate. To enhance their interest, we included examples relating their studies to different iGEM projects and we included our social events and trips.

Sharing these presentations among the students of these Finnish universities is a tool we are using to spread awareness about the iGEM competition in order to recruit the following team.

Social media

Social media is a useful tool to spread knowledge in an enjoyable manner and it is available to everyone. We have been sharing our project journey throughout Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin, and our Blogpost.

To make use of these tools, our team decided to create a series of educational comics. They are about the awesome world of synthetic biology and Dr. Bio and their purpose is to educate kids as well as the curious public. In these comics, we delve into synthetic biology as well as more basic concepts such as explaining what a cell is, DNA, and proteins among others. We also included an infographic about GMOs to share their advantages and safety in regard to food production. In that way, when introducing our project, it is helpful for the public to already have a background. Our graphic design team created the characters, graphics, and the story explained.

We have been receiving very positive feedback from the public and it has been a very easy and funny way to familiarize the general public with biology.

Biweekly newsletter

We greatly appreciate the assistance and guidance we’ve received throughout this project from various experts. In order to keep them all updated on our progress, we sent out a biweekly newsletter. The newsletter contained information on our successes and challenges during the summer, including more detailed information about our experiments. By doing this, we were able to keep everyone informed and show our appreciation for the help we’ve received.

Most experts are quite specialized in their own fields and may not necessaríly be accustomed to other fields. In order to combat that, our newsletter served to share more intersectional information we had gathered. We hope that everyone who has read our newsletter learned something new or interesting. Above all else, we hope that everyone is more interested in synthetic biology. You can find some excerpts from our newsletters below.