Outreach
Mathematics is a subject that many students struggle to see its utility in places other than the classroom. To help make this application more clear, we gave a guest lecture to second year University of Waterloo students about modelling, differential equations, and a brief derivation of our models from our 2014 project.
We are also planning a conference aimed at first and second year university students in engineering, science, and mathematics on the topics of bioengineering, biotechnology, and nanotechnology. We plan to include speakers and a theoretical design competition with some minor prizes for successful groups.
Inspiring the next generation of scientists is an important obligation if we are to expect the future to continue becoming brighter, so Waterloo iGEM spent time teaching the art of gel electrophoresis to aspiring students at a local high school (Sir John A. MacDonald).
In addition to reaching out to a local high school, we continued our partnership with the SHAD Valley Program by hosting a three day work shop for senior high school students. The students got to perform ligations, transformations, and run a diagnostic gel to check for their end results. (Insert another image).
Kayley, 2015 Waterloo SHAD
Group 2
We also ran workshops at the SCB Science Fair and at Fullton High School.
Outreach isn't just about teaching would-be engineers, scientists, and mathematicians. It's also about inspiring youth to participate and engage in STEM fields, and to be excited by discovery and creativity. We teamed up with Waterloo's Engineering Science Quest to run weekly workshops with students aged 5-7 to give them an introduction to biology to help spur their excitement.
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We created a series of videos inspired by Khan Academy about synthetic biology techniques. You can find them on our YouTube channel.