Educational Meeting Belated Minutes

[Eddie Yee Tak Ma]

Attendance:

Trevor Charles
Graham Cromar
Eddie Ma
Andre Masella
Kenny Zhan

Agenda:

Outlining, sketching--
- Goals and objectives for these educational / tutorial units
- What kinds of tools, skills, technologies do we have?
- Provides a means to produce content, tutorials etc.,
- Needs assessment.
- What are good / bad training materials?
- Where are the gaps?

Notes begin... The present
- Introductory biology texts are not topical for engineers or computer
scientists.
- Are not geared toward synthetic biology, contains too much doctrine.
- Andre's first course: Synthetic Biology for engineers
- Eddie's first course: Programming for Biologists

Segue: Engineering for Biologists, Discussion.
- GC: Identifies a need to teach biologists engineering
- Andre: No clear core of engineering identified.
- Unable to elucidate what constitutes "engineering" for biologists;
especially since there isn't a cohesive core.
- Make the engineering for biologists lecture available to this
working group (done).
- Andre: Other items that can be considered workshop materials --
mathematical modeling, software developing etc.,
- Andre: Biology modeling is not very congruent to engineering
modeling
- Andre: Biology modeling is usually more stochastic and less finite--
engineers would find use in a primer as it can translate the kind of
problems.
- Trevor: Are you referring to the the relationship between biology
and physical sciences.
- GC: Represillator example-- biologists are really missing an
understanding of well understood systems.
- GC: For example, frequency modulation-- how radios work-- how that
can be related to cell signalling.
- Trevor: how about using a natural system like lambda to demonstrate
many of these principles from both sides?

Bioinformatics tools, what can we use that already exists?
- GC: These materials are used to explain the relevance of say, the
three dimensional representation of a protein
- GC: Can bootstraping increase understanding so that problems can be
more effectively approached with existing tools?
- GC (example): software that's been developed specifically for a
specific project
- GC (example): such software is company specific

What resources do we have, what delivery do we want?
- Andre: Workshops, time frames-- online distribution-- faster to
deliver than a workshop-- will reduce the interaction but will
increase reusability
- Andre: May jive with the way that iGem teams are recruited--
workshops may just make sense
- GC: Workshop-- we can be sure that someone's attended.
- GC: Toronto tends to recruit all at once.
- GC: Timing...
- Try to collect together the video materials that we've been clued
into the fact that they're available.
- Stuff that AGem has available, mirror or host etc.,
- OGem videos-- post these online as well

Near Goals
- Work on tangible goals while something more involved occurs in the
background.
- Andre: Eddie and I were going to work on our items over the next few
weeks, we should have at least previews available by January
- Andre: In the mean time, we should bother people and find out what
materials are available for us to pull together
- Andre: Can we poll for gaps in the knowledge within each team?
- GC: A bit like self assessment-- it's difficult to know what one
doesn't know
- Andre: There are specific keywords and concepts that presumably
people have found difficult in past.

Future Goals
- GC: Lecture series would do well to expand beyond iGem
- GC: Would like to charge for workshop attendance
- Trevor: We can probably tie this into industry from Waterloo's synth
bio undergrad/grad programs etc.,

Finances
- GC: What moneys are available?
- Trevor: Possible to piggy back onto other venues etc.,

Future
- Andre: Meet again late January-- Andre and Eddie will have materials
done, others will have those industry ties etc., developed or planned
etc.,