Innovation Anthology #344:
Student teams who enter the International Genetically Engineered Machines competition have to do more than develop fantastic new organisms. They also have to delve into ethics and do some public outreach issues.
iGEM students at the University of Lethbridge have added an artistic component to their groundbreaking work on neutralizing toxic tailings ponds at oil sands plants.
As Mackenzie Cottum outlines, her team has turned their scientific discovery into art.
MACKENZIE COTTUM: We were so lucky to have a new media professor from our university show interest in our team and wanted to take our team into a more aesthetic frame of mind. And the way he did this was to take the bases that are normally found in DNA and translate that into music. And he also took basic lab procedures and pictures of those procedures, and tried to make them more appealing to the general public and to show different sides of that work.
Mackenzie Cottum says this novel approach has shown her and her iGEM team mates there’s more to science than results, and that artistic expression is something everyone can understand.
Thanks today to Alberta Innovates Technology Futures
FOR INNOVATION ANTHOLOGY
I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
Guest
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Sponsor
Alberta Innovates Technology Futures
Alberta Innovates launched its consolidation on November 1, 2016
780-450-5111
albertatechfutures.ca
250 Karl Clark Road,
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
T6N 1E4
Program Date: 2010-10-05