Share ideas, help each other, collaborate and have fun together.
Education Map
In an effort to improve educational inequities and break down
the barriers that prevent biology and STEM education from reaching
marginalized populations, our team traveled across China to conduct
educational outreach events (on the Education&Inclusivity page
)。Although we had many volunteers joining our team to assist us in this process, we realized the difficulty in truly altering the prevalent state of educational inequality.
Therefore, we decided to join hands with more people to overcome the challenge of inequality in education!
Education Map is a public service partnership initiated by HUBU-China. We are committed to promoting real and sustainable educational equity, breaking down barriers to the promotion of biology and STEM education among marginalized populations, and promoting Accessible Education.
You can see other IGEM teams on the map above. The map shows their efforts to promote education, and the dotted lines spread out to reach the locations where each team is promoting education. By clicking on the logos you can clearly see each team's educational information and their educational manifesto.
We hope that more IGEM teams, volunteers, and charitable organizations will join us in the future!
Acknowledgement：WHU-China，Jiangnan-China，Tsinghua-TFL
Meetups
Hubei University IGEM meeting
In March 2023, we participated in the Hubei University IGEM Conference held at the Siqi Hall of the Hubei University School of Life Sciences, and invited three external instructors, Yang Jian, Chen Weizhao, and Zhang Lijun, to come to the meeting to provide guidance. Mr. Chen Weizhao introduced the IGEM rules, organizational characteristics and his own experience in the competition.
At the conference, we shared the team's brainstorming sessions and strategies, while also providing each other with suggestions. This laid a good foundation for our project idea. In addition, Hubei University has organized many times for our five teams (HUBU-China,HUBU-HUBEI-CHINA, HUBU-SKY-China, HUBU-WUHAN-CHINA and Wuhan-Hubei-China) to exchange and learn from each other. We have obtained many interesting ideas from other teams, and the project of Wuhan-Hubei-China designed the cellulose degrading enzyme part, which allowed us to shift the feedstock to non-food crops. These ideas really helped us to improve our project.
(Figure 1 Photo of the conference)
The 10th China Regional CCIC
CCiC (China iGEMer Community Conference) is a national summit independently initiated by China's iGEM participant teams, aiming to provide a platform for iGEM teams to share resources and promote mutual learning and exchange. The conference promotes collaboration and communication among Chinese iGEM teams. CCiC encourages teams to present their projects, exchange ideas, and build connections within the iGEM community by organizing workshops and interactive sessions.
(Figure 2 Group photo)
We participated in the Integrated human practices session and the Model session organized by CCIC, which provided guidance for our dry lab activities. The 10th China Regional iGEMer Networking Meeting was held in Hainan with the theme of "Exploring the Potential of Synthetic Biology", which attracted more than 1,000 synthetic biology enthusiasts and provided a high-level communication platform for synthetic biology enthusiasts in China. Meanwhile, the activities of CCIC also inspired us to organize our own meetup.
Hubei Synthetic Biology Open Day
Since 2014, the IGEM teams from the central region of China have been organizing the Central China Exchange Meeting. After the COVID-19 epidemic, our team restarted the Central China exchange meeting. The purpose of this meeting is to promote the communication and cooperation among IGEM teams in central China, and to publicize and promote the knowledge and application of synthetic biology to the public. It provides a communication platform for all those who are interested in synthetic biology.
(Figure 3. Publicity poster)
In the morning session, the competing teams presented their projects through PowerPoint (PPT) and responded to other team's inquiries. They also provided suggestions to other teams. In the afternoon, each team prepared a project poster and exhibited the advanced achievements of synthetic biology in the lobby of the training building. Each team had its own booth to communicate and interact freely. Each team could introduce and explain the project content to the visitors, or visit other booths for in-depth communication.
(Figure 5 Photos of different teams in the Advanced Achievements)
(Figure 4 Group photo of the meeting)
At this meeting, we met many like-minded teams and acquired many novel ideas. We chatted very well with the team members of Hubei University of Technology and Wuhan University. It was this conference that laid the foundation for our Education Alliance (Education Map) and charity fundraising campaigns.
It is worth mentioning that this meeting is not only a communication meeting between IGEM teams, but also a synthetic biology publicity meeting for the public. You can see more detailed instructions at our E ducation & Inclusivity page.
(on the Education & Inclusivity page)
SynBio Challenges 2023(2nd)
In August, we participated in the SynBio Challenges 2023 sponsored by the Synthetic Biology Branch of the Chinese Society of Bioengineering (2nd)。
(Figure 6. Conference Manual)
We created a poster, informative article, and video to promote our project, and then conducted a presentation in front of professionals and other individuals. We have received a lot of questions about our project. At this conference, the Xiamen University project involved working with us, and we discussed the details with them.
(Figure 8 Cooperation between Xiamen University and us)
(Figure 7 Project poster)
In addition, we also participated in the roundtable conference on the prospects and applications of synthetic biology in the industrial field and the synthetic biology entrepreneurship sharing. This helped us improve our plan to bring our project to real life. At this conference, the jury presented a number of awards and we won silver awards, which gave us confidence in the success of the project. This gathering gave us the opportunity to communicate with professionals in the field of synthetic biology to give advice on our project.
(Figure 10 Award group photo)
(Figure 9 Xiamen Roundtable Meeting)
Teamwork
The IGEM charity fundraiser
In response to the IGEM Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), in September, we, along with four other teams from Hubei University - HUBU-China, HUBU-HUBEI-CHINA, HUBU-SKY-China, HUBU-WUHAN-CHINA, and HBUT-China from Hubei University of Technology, jointly initiated the IGEM Charity Fundraising Campaign. We will donate the funds and materials raised to the Hubei Provincial Youth Development Foundation, doing our best to eliminate poverty and help poor students as much as possible. You can check out the more detailed instructions at our E ducation & Inclusivity page.
(on the Education & Inclusivity page)
