Communication
How well we communicate is not determined by how well we say things but how well we are understood
~ Andrew Grove
Introduction
Effectively communicating our project to others is a crucial skill that must be learned, especially when striving to increase our team’s visibility. We have worked to increase awareness of our team and project by attending and hosting events, utilizing social media and posting multiple publications. Down below you can read all about our events, publications and social media.
Mini Jamboree
On Monday October 7th, our team will be organizing the Benelux and Germany Mini Jamboree. This is an annual event organized by iGEM TU-Eindhoven teams and takes place after the Wiki Freeze and before the Grand Jamboree. The Mini Jamboree is a spin-off of the Grand Jamboree, providing an opportunity for teams from the Benelux and Germany to practice their pitch in front of a knowledgeable audience. It is an ideal event to receive valuable feedback from scientists and students working in the field of synthetic biology ahead of the Grand Jamboree.
The event will be held at Eindhoven University of Technology and will feature 12 teams from Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany. We started preparing for this event four months in advance to ensure a smooth course of the day. The teams were asked to prepare a presentation which they will present in front of other teams and a panel of knowledge judges from different backgrounds. The teams were also asked to prepare a poster which would also be included in the judging process. There are three awards to win: one for best project, one for best poster and a public prize.
As mentioned earlier, the teams will prepare a poster, which will be displayed during the networking market. This allows teams to engage with sponsors and learn more about their work. The poster market also offers an opportunity for teams to interact with one another, ask questions about their projects, and discuss their overall iGEM experience.
After the event, we are planning to organize a pubcrawl and a dinner for all the teams that were interested in joining. The dinner will be planned at Hubble Community Cafe a student bar on our univeristy. The pubcrawl will most likely take place in the Eindhoven city centre.
Unfortunately, something went wrong with the after movie of the Mini Jamboree 2023, but here are some photo’s to get an impression of the event itself.
We look forward to the day and hopefully the other teams as well!
Company visit Qiagen
Qiagen, one of our sponsors, invited us to visit their company in Hilden, Germany. We were given a tour in their Biosafety Level II laboratory, where they showcased their products, explained how they operate, and they even allowed us to run a test on their QIAStat device. This device detects up to nineteen different respiratory infections for quick patient results. Check the slideshow to see the results.
In addition to the lab, we visited their production facility and got a tour. They demonstrated how their kits, such as the PCR cleanup kit, are assembled and how their well-known spin tubes are manufactured. Overall, it was a fun day full of insights and new experiences.
Us in the Qiagen showroom
Marijn and Luna finding out what kind of respiratory infection they have
Us during the Qiagen production facility tour
Luna's test result
TU Contest
The TU/e Contest is an initiative created by TU/e innovation Space, specifically made for engineering students to develop their entrepreneurial skills through a competition. It helps transform your idea into a viable business concept that tackles real-world societal challenges. The competition started in early March and lasted until the end of June, and from March on, we participated in different workshops and networking events all hosted by TU/e innovation Space, a community that develops and facilitates interdisciplinary hands-on challenge-based learning on engineering design and entrepreneurship. For example, we pitched our idea at the Partner Meet & Greet to experienced partners, allowing us to network with companies such as ThermoFisher, IGS GeboJagema, and BOM. That not only gave us the chance to receive feedback from a different perspective on our project, but it was also the first time we presented PROMISE to an audience unfamiliar with our project.
The participation of this competition did not only help in generating feedback from knowledgeable partners, but also in learning how to pitch our project to people who are less acquainted with synthetic biology. In this way, we practiced with what was well known amongst the general public and what terms needed more explaining.
Moreover, through the TU/e Contest, we got in connection with people who provided valuable insights regarding our Intellectual Property and business case, like Nataša Maršić and Bart van Grevenhof. The TU/e Contest helped immensely with the first stages of our business case, and through the TU/e Contest, we developed our business case even further. You can read all about our business case on our entrepreneurship page..
Ultimately, we competed against 40 different teams and start-ups and we were part of the 10 finalists who got the opportunity to pitch their project in front of a knowledgeable jury. We were excited to be chosen as finalists for the Contest, and even though we did not win a prize, we were grateful for the amount of useful feedback that we have received and the opportunity to practice pitching. Through the TU/e Contest, PROMISE felt alive for the very first time.
Meet-Up Münster
We attended the international Münster meetup where we heard a bunch of interesting talks about synthetic biology. We had the pleasure to hear from interesting experts. The event was organized by the iGEM team from Münster and was attended by a lot of teams we already knew, and some we did not. It was very interesting to hear from everyone about their progress.
We also got the opportunity to pitch our project and get some useful feedback. We used a different approach to the poster presentation where we explained our project to someone from another team, who then explained our poster to others. Additionally, we participated in a podcast which was very fun.
We of course also got the chance to sample some of the local beers and enjoy the city together.
Dutch iGEM Meet-Up
Together with Sowmya Shreedhar From Centre for Living Technologies, we and the Wageningen iGEM team hosted the Dutch iGEM meetup on Friday July 12th. The aim of this event was to meet the other Dutch teams, to practice pitching our projects and of course, receiving feedback from the teams. Our main tasks in organizing the event were taking pictures, communication between the other teams and making sure the pitches went smoothly.
The event took place in Utrecht and began with pitches from our team and other Dutch teams, allowing everyone to see each other's progress on their iGEM projects. Then we got two interesting guest lectures: one about Intellectual Property and patenting in synthetic biology which was given by Britte Bouchaut and one about ethics and philosophy in synthetic biology research which was given by Britta Helwig. Afterwards, we had a feedback session where the teams could ask one-on-one questions about each other’s project. This was a nice way to get a deeper understanding about each other’s projects, even if you lacked knowledge in the field of the other team.
Synbio NL
We went to SynBioNL’s event, ‘Building Connections: Fostering Synbio Collaborations in the Netherlands’ in Wageningen. The event featured insightful talks from academia, society, and industry, as well as panel discussions with experts from various fields, engaging pitches from PhD students and a valuable networking session.
We also had the opportunity to pitch our project to the audience and received valuable feedback. The audience contained a lot of experts in the field, which forced us to improve our presentation and increase our knowledge about the topic.
Attending this event helped us to connect with the broader Dutch synthetic biology community and to learn about the latest developments in the field. We thoroughly enjoyed the event and gained a broader understanding of synthetic biology beyond the scope of our project.
BFH Meet-Up Bielefeld
We visited the European iGEM meet in Bielefeld Germany. Here we spent a weekend with 20 teams, mostly from Germany but also from as far as Abu Dhabi. This led to a lot of new connections and friendships.
We also pitched our project here, which led to contacts with teams from Aachen, Bielefeld and Freiburg, who are doing complimentary research to ours. Their feedback and perspective on our project was very valuable. You can read more about this on the collaborations page.
There were also interesting workshops and lectures. Here we learned about what several companies are doing in the field of synthetic biology. We also met our sponsors PlasmidFactory, SanBio and XOLLX Lab here, more about them on the sponsors page.
Finally it was also very fun, since there were a lot of amusing activities and we enjoyed the beer that was brewed at the university.
Promega Event
We were present at the Promega Corporation Innovation Days 2024 in Amsterdam which was an insightful event focused on exploring luminescent technologies and automation. Throughout the day, we listened to a lot of interesting guest lectures spoken by professionals from various academic backgrounds. We were also introduced to the latest products Promega was launching.
Brainport blog
You might not know Eindhoven, but we think that you might be familiar with ASML, or at least their products. ASML is part of the ever-growing economic region Brainport located in Eindhoven. Since we are a Student team operating under the Brainport region, we were asked to write small blogposts about what we do and who we are. These blogplots will be released in the future. With the blogposts we tried to raise awareness about synthetic biology, our work and iGEM itself.
Information mail
This year we decided to publish a monthly newsletter . The idea arose during a meeting when we discussed how we wanted to keep our sponsors involved. We decided that our newsletter would be open for everyone interested to make sure to reach as big as an audience as possible. The newsletter had a fixed structure: we started with updates on our lab work and entrepreneurial activities. Next, we discussed the events we attended that month, which included iGEM meetups and professional gatherings. Moreover, we had a part were our sponsors could introduce themselves and tell our audience about their work. Lastly we had two 'fun' columns. The first one was 'Travel with M. Smegmatis', since a part of our lab work took place in Nijmegen and we had to travel there. The second one was 'Joke of the Month', where one of our team members chose their favorite joke in the hopes that our audience would enjoy them. You can find the August version in the drop-down below.
Survey for the Dutch lung cancer assocation
We sent out a survey on lung cancer in longkanker Nederland which is the Dutch professional patients organization that advocates for everyone affected by lung cancer: the patients, the family and next of kin. The goal of the survey was to determine the effect of existing treatment and the quality of life as a result of the cancer diagnosis. We will use this input to identify the problems with the current treatments and use these identifications to improve our cancer vaccine. Here you can find the article that was written about us. Also check out our human practices page for the results of the survey.
Posts
We wanted to educate the general public on our project and about the importance of synthetic biology and what better way to do so than to use Social Media. By posting regularly, we hoped that our audience was kept engaged and informed, and hopefully get excited about the growing world of synthetic biology. We made it a point to post consistently on our iGEM socials. This meant that we posted three times a week on Instagram and once a week on LinkedIn, X and Facebook Each day had a different focus or as we called it a storyline. So Mondays were dedicated to introducing us as a team and reflecting back on previous iGEM teams. Wednesdays covered serious topics, like sponsorships posts, project updates and events that we went to as well as organized. These serious topics were posted on our LinkedIn, X and Facebook since we have a more serious audience there. And lastly, on Friday we posted something light-hearted, like a joke, team building or team quirks, to signal the end of the working week. We hoped by doing this approach that the content stayed diverseS. Here below, you can see some posts of our posts, but we invite you to take a look around our Instagram feed as well.