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PERSPECTIVE article

Front. Bioeng. Biotechnol.
Sec. Synthetic Biology
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2024.1431374
This article is part of the Research Topic Education in Synthetic Biology View all 4 articles

An Integrated Engineering Worldview of Synthetic Biology Education Through the Lens of Webinar Based Pedagogy

Provisionally accepted
Iain George Iain George 1*Paul Ross Paul Ross 2Yixian Yang Yixian Yang 3Martin Holub Martin Holub 4Nina Rajpurohit Nina Rajpurohit 5Ibrahim Dulijan Ibrahim Dulijan 6Jacob Beal Jacob Beal 7Alejandro Vignoni Alejandro Vignoni 8Dennis Mishler Dennis Mishler 9*
  • 1 Analytical Performance Center, Danone North America, Louisville, CO, United States
  • 2 BioStrat Marketing, Boynton Beach, United States
  • 3 Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, North East England, United Kingdom
  • 4 Delft University of Technology, Delft, Netherlands
  • 5 Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, United States
  • 6 Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, New Jersey, United States
  • 7 Raytheon BBN, Cambridge, California, United States
  • 8 Universitat Politècnica de València, Valencia, Valencia, Spain
  • 9 Department of Molecular Biosciences, Center for Systems and Synthetic Biology, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Synthetic biology is an interdisciplinary field that brings together engineering and biology concepts alongside the arts and social sciences to develop solutions to pressing problems in our world. The education of students entering this field has relied on a diverse set of pedagogical methods to accomplish this goal. One non-profit group, iGEM -the International Genetically Engineered Machine competition, has been a driver of students' awareness of synthetic biology for the last 20 years giving many young researchers their first experience in the field of synthetic biology.Dissemination of synthetic biology concepts by iGEM has occurred through several programs including a webinar series started during the 2020 COVID pandemic. The iGEM webinar series successfully engaged students by taking inspiration from synthetic biology programs in Europe, North America, and Asia that had themselves evolved alongside iGEM. The webinar designers modeled the content after their experiences in iGEM as well as their academic courses, pedagogy, and mentoring experiences. This series has produced globally accessible pedagogy for both technical synthetic biology knowledge and the communication skills necessary to build and communicate synthetic biology projects. The hope is that this series functions as a lasting blueprint that can be used by future educators in synthetic biology and other disciplines to reduce barriers that students face when attempting to enter cutting edge fields.

    Keywords: iGEM1, DBTL2, Global Education3, Webinar Education, Synthetic Biology Education5. (Min.5-Max. 8)

    Received: 11 May 2024; Accepted: 06 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 George, Ross, Yang, Holub, Rajpurohit, Dulijan, Beal, Vignoni and Mishler. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Iain George, Analytical Performance Center, Danone North America, Louisville, CO, United States
    Dennis Mishler, Department of Molecular Biosciences, Center for Systems and Synthetic Biology, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, 78705, Texas, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.