"People ignore design that ignores people" -- Frank Chimero

We are ZJU-China 2023. This year we place great emphasis on Human Practices work which is instrumental in refining our program to have a positive impact in the world.

At the beginning of the project, we conducted a Stakeholder brainstorm and a Power-Interest Grid value analysis, where all members of the project worked together to open up ideas for the project at Human Practices. During the wavering of the topic selection, we sincerely consulted several professors from Zhejiang University and Westlake University. Either concise or complete, these feedbacks all benefited us a lot. For example, Prof. Chai Jijie from Westlake University encouraged our ideas and affirmed our creativity.

In order to improve our project, we read a lot of literature, reports, conference proceedings, and interacted with more than 30+ stakeholders, from which we have learned a lot. The positive impact of Human Practices on the project is undeniable. Please see our integrated Human Practices for detailed information.

To better learn about the demand of the puclic, we designed a questionnaire that fit the theme of the project and distributed it. To our surprise, we received 176 answers from people from 4 continents and 5 countries, including China, Afghanistan, France, Anguilla and Chile. Recognizing the lack of knowledge in the field of synthetic biology, we wrote and mapped tweets that were targeted to the public, introducing the team, the Flora Sentinel project, agricultural issues, etc. We are thrilled to find that the tweets received 1,500+ views. We look forward to doing more good work for the world in the future.

We saw the business value of our project and designed a business plan for it, which is reflected in our Entrepreneur board. In order to make a more complete and mature plan for our startup, we would like to communicate with other companies incubated on the Zhejiang University Entrepreneurship Platform and learn from experienced entrepreneurs and investors.

Better be unborn than untaught, for ignorance is the root of misfortune. -- Plato, Ancient Greek phiosopher

We felt like we should make it a priority to raise awareness about big issues the world is facing, such as hunger and inequality. Moreover, our encounters with different stakeholders (biotech industries, agricultural organizations, law makers, consumers) throughout the journey led us to understand the great importance of communicating about the different steps and actors that enable us to have enough food. Agriculture in general and all the jobs that are part of this field deserve to be put under the spotlight and we wanted to contribute to that.

The purpose of this year's education is to break the barrier that keeps people from getting in touch with the cutting-edged knowledge in synthetic biology and other fields. We first consulted some experienced people working in education and even experienced scientific research on a research vessel in Vermont. In this way, we know what a successful education program should be.

As for the design of our own education program, we try to reach as many communities as possible. We organized activities in primary school as well as high schools, in urban areas as well as rural areas. Also, we pay great attention to equality, both economical and sexual. Education programs are carefully designed to better fit certain audiences.

Educational activities are the link between us and society. So our educational activities are not just one way. At the end of each event, we collect feedback from participants with a view to improving our educational approach and program design based on their input.

Alone, we can do little, so little, together we can do so much. -- Helen Keller

Highly aware of the importance of collaboration and communication, we actively participated in several communication programs, in the hope of hearing the voice of stakeholders and other iGEMers as well as making ourselves heard.

“Alone, we can do little, so little, together we can do so much.” -- Helen Keller

This year's Human Practices supports not only project improvement, but also implementation, entrepreneurship and our understanding of scientific development. Stakeholder's critical view of our ideas and their feedback helped us to optimize our project plan and solution design into one that is effective, feasible, and likely to be successful in each sector. Integrating feedback, values, and needs of relevant stakeholders is important to avoid blindness of engineers.

To produce a saRNA-based plant vaccine product, one needs to go through many steps and long efforts, from research and development to production. It starts with the R&D phase followed by securing IP, preclinical and clinical tests, production, legislation, and marketing. To understand the complete process of implementation and to be able to integrate the requirements of every phase for the design of our plant vaccine, we have consulted many experts. Taking inspiration from Team TU-Eindhoven 2022, we divided the fields covered by the experts we consulted into six categories: the need, the science, implementation, safety & ethics, laws & regulations, and business. Each field contributes to the problem and our solution from a different perspective, thereby leading to distinctive requirements for both our project plan and our solution design. We, therefore, bring together all sectors to make an impact on society, while at the same time we are being responsible and good for the world. For more information on which tools we use, open the sections below about the AREA framework and the Gibbs reflection cycle.

A good entrepreneur is a person who solves society's problems with available resources and at a lower cost.

Flora Sentinel designs customized saRNA vaccine platforms for plant diseases. We use a synthetic biology approach to design vaccines and iterate on vaccine designs based on real-world needs. Expecting Flora Sentinel to help solve real agricultural problems in society, we designed the project to be productized.

To commercialize our project, we designed a complete business plan together with the help of numerous stakeholders. If you would like to learn more about the impact of these stakeholders on our project design and business plan, please refer to our iHP page . To have a greater impact on the world, as a part of supporting Entrepreneurship, we plan on applying for patent and building a startup to market our project.

"Human Practices is the study of how your work affects the world, and how the world affects your work" -- Peter Carr, Director of Judging

There are some underlying logics in people's legal and ethical standards that we do not yet understand. Without understanding it, we may not be able to essentially understand the source of ethical problems and eliminate people's concerns. Although we have talked to many experts, we found that we are only able to understand some of the scattered knowledge, but not to form a systematic understanding. Therefore, we decided to do some literature research on laws and ethical problems.

If something works for some disadvantaged groups, it will inevitably meet more needs and achieve better results, which can also serve normal groups, so it must work for everyone. -- Xinyu Xiu