UCL iGEM students making connections across subjects and beyond the academy
Student collaboration has been reported as being beneficial to student attainment (Scheufele, Blesius and Lester 2007; Singaram et al. 2011) and providing evidence of credible inter-team collaboration has become a formal iGEM success criterion over time. The iGEM team wiki sites also function as a medium for communication and collaboration between teams and evidence suggests that such internet-based approaches are highly effective drivers of collaboration (Collier 2010; Sampaio-Maia et al. 2014; Ostermayer and Donaldson 2015).
Core values shared by iGEM and the Connected Curriculum framework (Fung 2016) are the importance of encouraging students to be aware of their social responsibility as global citizens and to consider the ethical, social and legal implications of their work. An important feature of iGEM is the core requirement that teams make credible links outside of the academy to explore potential societal impacts of their work. This stipulation has become known as ‘Human Practices’ and has been summarised by the director of iGEM judging, Peter Carr: ‘Human Practices is the study of how your work affects the world, and how the world affects your work.’ In response, UCL iGEM teams have initiated many compelling interactions with organisations outside academia to engage with real-world stakeholders. Two examples discussed below illustrate UCL iGEM students’ human practice activities and how they have led to the formation of connections with wider society.
Biohacking and the laptop laboratory
The 2012 team, ‘Plastic Republic’, explored the feasibility of designing a bacterium capable of persisting in the world’s oceans and degrading waste plastics. As part of the project students initiated contact with members of the public who use the ‘London BioHackspace’ community laboratory in Hackney, East London. This collaboration represents somewhat of a landmark in synthetic biology (Borg et al. 2016) as it led members of the BioHackspace to design and assemble their own BioBrick™ (serial number BBa_K729016), which became the first ever BioBrick™ submitted to the iGEM Registry of Standard Biological Parts by members of the public.
The do-it-yourself ethos of the BioHackspace led a group of 2012 UCL iGEM alumni to found the company Bento Bio (https://www.bento.bio), which has developed a laptop-sized molecular biology laboratory for retail to the general public. Bethan Wolfenden and Philipp Boeing were 2012 UCL iGEM team members and used the 2013 iGEM Entrepreneurship (iGEM-E) competition to take the first steps in founding Bento Bio, then known as Darwin Toolbox. Like other UCL iGEM alumni, Philipp and Bethan have been closely involved in the design and implementation of subsequent UCL iGEM cycles, partnering with team members and supervisors to develop iGEM training and teaching. They also contribute a guest lecture on the UCL Bachelor of Arts and Sciences course, BENG3071 Open Source Synthetic Biology, presenting case studies drawn from their experiences with Bento Bio, synthetic biology and iGEM.
Mental health and medicine: Open Mind Night
The 2015 project, ‘Mind the Gut’, dealt with issues of mental health and featured the design of a genetic circuit within a probiotic bacterium that could help decrease the negative side-effects commonly experienced by patients taking certain classes of sedative. To explore how mental health is treated, and the impacts of mental health medication, the team established links with the mental health and arts charity, CoolTan Arts (www.cooltanarts.org.uk). An event was co-organised with CoolTan Arts to exhibit artwork produced by people suffering from mental distress and to discuss synthetic biology approaches to addressing mental health.
The team also worked with the Mental Fight Club (http://mentalfightclub.com), an organisation that explores creative routes to addressing the challenges of mental health and ill-health. Interactions with Mental Fight Club, CoolTan Arts and others inspired the team to host a public ‘Open Mind’ event which mixed performance, such as singing, poetry and stand-up comedy, with honest and open narratives of mental illness. Frank accounts of mental health challenges, provided in a remarkably brave manner by members of the public, served to highlight the real human connections between research and research impact.
Why connecting beyond the university can improve the student experience
The ‘human practices’ element of iGEM invites students to expand their definition of what a project is, to see it as something more than the process of gathering data for discussion exclusively with academic staff. Projects such as ‘Mind the Gut’ and ‘Darwin Toolbox’ typify the passion and commitment displayed by UCL iGEM students taking their own projects to authentic stakeholders outside of the academy. During the process of planning and delivering these engagement activities students tend to develop a much richer and more expansive sense of what is possible and just how ‘real’ research can be. Research is no longer merely a different form of assessment in a narrow educational context, but a basic human activity with the potential to engage and impact communities.