Promoting learning, curiosity, and collaboration.
Synthusiasts is a student-led organization on the University of Alberta. Founded in 2018, we strive to promote collaboration, learning, and curiosity in the unique fields of synthetic biology, genetic engineering, and biotechnology. These fields are unique in their multi-disciplinary backgrounds, allowing interdisciplinary collaboration in numerous fields (ex. business and medicine, computer science and biology, sociology and genetics). Thus, many of our events and initiatives have focused on hosting events introducing collaboration between different forms of thinking and inviting individuals from diverse backgrounds.
As we know, 2020 has been an interesting year, introducing a number of challenges for our events. However, Synthusiasts has worked hard to adapt to these changes by bringing our events online. For the 2020-2021 year, Synthusiasts are hosting a virtual lab tour, collaborating with TeamUP Science’s Interdisciplinary Science Competition and Science Fundamentals SciFunWeek, and planning our annual Synthetic Biology Solutions Challenge.
Going forward, Synthusiasts are also in the works of planning future initiatives to establish our group’s presence in industry, academia, and community.
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The Synthusiasts 2020 Team
Going forward…
Synthusiasts hopes to expand our presence in industry, academia, and community so that we can host events which introduces our participants to other avenues of collaboration. We have many exciting ideas lined up and hope to carry them out in the future. Some of our long-discussed initiatives involve hosting a stand-alone molecular biology workshop, creating a science literacy module, hosting a scientific convention, and developing a radio podcast.
Our history.
Before
In 2017, a group of students from University of Alberta participated in the international Genetic Engineering Machines (iGEM) competition, which is a competition that introduced participants to the multidisciplinary approaches to genetic engineering and it’s related fields including synthetic biology, genetics, biotechnology, and more. Inspired to share these experiences to the general community and promote critical thinking in these fields, we decided to establish a student organization on campus.
Our first step — VERIFY WITH ETHAN AND HEATHER BEFORE PUBLISHING
Synthusiasts hosted our first events in 2018. A part of our goal is to promote collaboration and we wanted to encompass these values. Thus, many of our own events were hosted in collaboration with other organizations and communities in our local community. One of our first events was done in collaboration with the Telus World of Science where we hosted a bacteria paint night. The event strove to present misconceptions about bacteria in a fun and interactive environment.
Following this, we got in touch with other local organizations such as TeamUP Science and Science Fundamentals to plan collaborative initiatives.
Our first annual event
In March 2019, we hosted our first ever Synthetic Biology Solutions Challenge, an initiative which first introduced our presence to our local industries and student body on University of Alberta campus.