Outreach

Check out our camp slideshow here!

We held two sessions (morning and afternoon) of a four day middle school bioscience camp for 50 students. It was themed "Life: an expedition". The camp was aimed at introducing students to the diversity of life and experience the latest technologies in molecular biology using state of the art equipment. Students had an opportunity to work with organisms inside and out in their native environment. Corinne, Dylan, Muriel and other CAPS alumni volunteered as helpers at the camp. We taught them about DNA, synthetic biology, and ecology through hands-on activities. They learned:

• Laboratory equipment use including micropipetting, centrifugation, and vortexing
• DNA extraction
• Transformation of bacteria and practicing sterile techniques and streak plating
• Gel electrophoresis of DNA
• Discuss current iGEM project and the establishment of an on-going club for next year

We have also made Facebook and Twitter pages that are consistently kept up to date with everything that we have accomplished. This allow us and the other iGEM teams to keep up with are work as well as see the great things all the other teams are doing. Finally, we designed a new way to teach students 3A assembly. It is a paper activity that really forces students to grasp the new concept before they hop into a complicated lab.