Overview

Human Practices documents how stakeholder conversations, ethics, regulation, and community needs shaped PetaScale, from wastewater operators and PETase scientists to policy contacts and the public.

Season progress

Through summer 2026, HP moved from winner-case analysis and a global stakeholder map into tailored outreach and interviews, three written initiatives (regulatory, socioeconomic, sustainability), a bioethics symposium, and a dual feedback track for PETadex and the reports.

Track week-by-week detail on the contribution calendar (filter Human Practices).

Events

Public and team moments where HP work showed up this season.

May 9: Team social (with Trash Team)

Joint social announced in early HP meetings; outreach covered photo/video for Instagram and the wiki.

June 15–17: Synbio poster (University of Waterloo)

Poster presentation accepted mid-season. HP used the window to practice project framing for an academic audience while stakeholder outreach continued.

July 12: Bioethics Symposium (virtual)

Sunday symposium, 2–4pm EST. Each team gave a 10–15 minute ethics presentation plus Q&A, guided by beneficence, non-maleficence, justice, and autonomy, plus equitable access and scale-up design questions.

July 23: Meet 15, dual feedback track

After the symposium, HP split stakeholder meetings into (1) PETadex website feedback and (2) feedback on the regulatory / socioeconomic / sustainability reports. Follow-ups to prior PETase science contacts began here.

September 19: Microplastics conference

Save-the-date shared with Outreach. Seminar and panel speakers (including Miriam Diamond and Karen Wirsig) support Integrated HP storytelling for the wiki and Jamboree.

Resources

Working concepts the HP team uses. Prefer shared Drive / Discord channels for live sheets and interview notes.

1. Mission Statement

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2. Stakeholders

Stakeholders that gave context to the problems of our project.

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3. Human Practices and Education

Executive Summary

Our Human Practices and Education work this season started from a straightforward belief: science only matters if it leaves the lab. Plastic pollution is a problem everyone lives with, but synthetic biology, and the idea that an enzyme could break plastic down at its source, is still foreign to most people. Our job was to close that gap, and to work it in both directions. We were not only broadcasting our project outward, we were listening just as hard, because what we heard on ethics, regulation, and where enzymes actually fit into industry ended up shaping how we scoped PetaBite.

We hosted and organized three conferences, headlined by our own UofT Microplastics Conference. We mentored two high school teams, one of which won a high school University of Toronto biotechnology competition. We ran knowledge exchanges with three universities abroad, in Sweden, Greece, and China, and we carried out nine campus collaborations across the University of Toronto.

UofT Microplastics Conference: Our Crowning Human Practices Achievement

The UofT Microplastics Conference was our flagship Human Practices initiative and one of the most ambitious initiatives in iGEM Toronto's history. It was a free, one-day conference at the University of Toronto dedicated to microplastics and plastic pollution, and it was designed to bridge three groups that rarely share a room: researchers, the public, and the people in a position to act on the problem. It ran on September 19, 2026, and the full program lives at uoftmicroplastics.ca.

We brought together more than 150 attendees, 15 poster presentations, and 5 keynote speakers drawn from across Canada. The posters were not a side attraction, they put early-career researchers and students in front of an engaged audience and gave them a real venue to defend their work. The keynotes were not narrow talks, they gave attendees a national picture of where microplastics research and policy actually stand rather than the thin slice any single lab ever sees. Across the day the program moved through the human and environmental toll of microplastics, the shortcomings of current removal methods such as membrane filtration and chemical recycling, and the question of where enzymatic degradation could realistically fit into wastewater and industrial systems.

This was not a few-week sprint, it was a six-month, large-scale effort that demanded deliberate planning, disciplined organization, and constant cross-team communication. Pulling it off did not mean running one task well, it meant running several full workstreams at once and landing them all on the same date. We had to raise the funding to keep the event free, secure and manage the venue, design the program and recruit keynote speakers willing to travel, source and review poster submissions, market the conference widely enough to fill the room, and coordinate a volunteer team to run the day itself. Keeping it free to attend was not a small courtesy, it was a fundraising commitment that shaped every downstream decision from venue to marketing. The scale of the collaboration it required stretched the team on skills that have nothing to do with the lab, and it was better for it.

The hardest lesson was not technical, it was that convening people is a discipline of its own. Getting a wastewater researcher, a policy specialist, and a first-year student to each find value in the same afternoon meant designing the program around translation rather than content alone. We also learned that a free event is not effort-free, it carries an enormous amount of hidden groundwork, and that a clear, well-marketed brand does more to fill a room than any single speaker. On the science side, the keynotes and poster conversations did not contradict our direction, they reinforced it, returning again and again to room-temperature operation and integration into existing infrastructure as the barriers practitioners actually care about. The best moment was not any single talk, it was the room being full after six months of not knowing whether anyone would come, and then watching the cross-disciplinary conversations we had designed the whole day to produce start happening on their own.

Other Conferences Hosted

The microplastics conference was the largest event we hosted, but it was not the only one. Two more conferences rounded out our organizing work this year, and neither was built alone. Both were built in partnership, one with a high school team we mentored and one with universities across the continent.

cGEM

The first was cGEM, a national high school synthetic biology pitch competition we helped create and host alongside the iGEM Ontario High School team, held for the first time on August 29, 2026 at the Myhal Auditorium on the University of Toronto St. George campus. The format was not invitation-only, it was open: 10 teams applied online, and 5 advanced to the in-person round. Building a competition from nothing was not a matter of booking a room, it meant designing the application and selection process, the judging structure, the venue logistics, and the day itself, all for an audience of high school students, many of whom were meeting synthetic biology for the first time. What we learned running it is that the students did not need a harder competition, they needed an accessible way in, and cGEM was built to be exactly that. The best moment was watching the five finalist teams pitch in a real university auditorium, which for most of them was the first time they had presented science in that kind of setting.

North American Mini Jamboree

The second was the North American Mini Jamboree, where we did not simply attend, we both co-hosted and competed. On the organizing side, we worked with the North American iGEM ambassadors and a group of collaborating universities to create opportunities for more than 29 participating universities and over 200 participants, coordinating the schedule, the peer-feedback structure, and the logistics an event of that size depends on. Working alongside the ambassadors and the other host schools taught us that a large multi-institution event does not run on effort alone, it runs on a clear division of labour and constant communication across teams, and it was genuinely a pleasure to build something at that scale with peers from across the continent. We also competed, and PetaBite did not just take part, it held its own. Out of over 200 participants and 29 teams across North America, we were nominated for Best Entrepreneurship in the top 3, Best Presentation in the top 5, and Best Human Practices in the top 3, and we placed Second Overall. The recognition we were proudest of was not the overall placement, it was the Human Practices nomination, earned at an event we had a hand in running, because it reflected the exact work described throughout this section.

University Collaboration Conversations

Closer to home, our reach was measured in students. Further afield, it was measured in institutions, and this year that meant sustained conversations with teams on three other continents and a bioethics forum in the United States. A single team in Toronto cannot generate that range of perspective on its own, it takes peers who work under different rules and in different markets.

The first was a podcast exchange with Lund University's team in Sweden. The conversation did not stay surface-level, it got into the sustainability case for enzymatic degradation against mechanical and chemical recycling, how each team thinks about deploying enzymes in real industrial settings rather than only in the lab, and how differently the two groups frame the impact of their work. The format let us reach people who never attend a conference, and what we took from it was how differently a European team weighs environmental impact, which sharpened how we talk about ours.

The second was with the University of Patras iGEM program in Greece. Most of the discussion was not on the science, it was on the ethics and regulation of releasing engineered biology into the environment, and on how the rules and public attitudes we work with in Canada compare to the EU framework they operate under. That contrast was not academic, it was useful, because the EU is further along on microplastics regulation than Canada is, and it gave us a preview of where our own environment may be heading.

The third was with the Fudan University team in Shanghai, which extended our reach into Asia alongside Lund and Patras. We compared notes on scaling enzyme work toward industrial use and on how plastic policy and manufacturing look from inside a very different regulatory and industrial context. The result was not a single takeaway, it was a standing set of peers in Europe, Asia, and North America to pressure-test our thinking against.

Finally, we took part in the University of Michigan Bioethics Symposium, where we spent our time on the questions wet-lab data cannot answer: whether deploying an engineered enzyme counts as contained use or an open-environment release, what ecological-safety evidence would be needed before releasing one into water systems, and the equity implications of introducing new biotech into municipal water systems that disproportionately serve lower-income communities. The symposium did not sit apart from our technical work, it fed directly into it, and it is part of why we prioritize enzyme candidates with clean homology to natural proteins and lead with a contained bioreactor form factor.

High School Teams Mentored

Hosting events was only half of the education work. The other half was not broad, it was deep: sustained, personal mentorship of two high school teams we committed to for the entire season.

The first was a brand new Ontario high school team we took under our wing and guided through the whole process, from the fundamentals of synthetic biology to running their own events. Their story is not a tidy success, it is a more honest one. They were unable to secure the funding to compete at the iGEM competition itself this year, but a lack of funding did not end their season, it redirected it. We kept mentoring them the whole way through, and they are now planning to apply again next year. Watching a team stay committed through a setback like that, and choose to build for the following year regardless, was one of the more meaningful things we were part of this season. In their own words:

Our Mission

The mission of the iGEM Ontario High School team is to make synthetic biology a more well-known field for high schoolers. Synthetic biology is still a relatively underrepresented field among high school students. Consequently, most students approach biology through traditional biology and medical science rather than engineering biology. As a team, a major goal of ours is to increase the methods in which students can enter biology. iGEM and synthetic biology seem inaccessible because students either do not know what they are, how to participate, or where to find resources. This is why our team consistently tries to host events, make social media marketing, provide opportunities to join our team, and work our hardest to take part in the Grand Jamboree for the next year.

Our Events

One of the biggest accomplishments the iGEM Ontario High School team has achieved is the establishment of a c-GEM; a high school synthetic biology pitch competition. It was hosted on August 29th, 2026, for the first time with the aid of the UofT iGEM team, at the Bahen Information Centre at the UofT St. George Campus. Along with these competitions, we also try to reach out to our local communities, and we have taken part in outreach conferences like Markham Youth Expo.

Our Members

The most crucial part of our team are the dedicated members of our team: The Presidents: Lukas Chang and Hillary Wan Head of Human Practices and Marketing: Eloise Nose Wet Lab team: Stella Shen Outreach and Wet Lab team: Sophia Tarves and Kathy Han Business Team: Ethan Ping Dry Lab: Akshat Goenka However, throughout the process of hosting our conferences, each and every single member had a vital role in marketing, finance, and outreach, far beyond what their respective roles required.

Our Goals and Future Events

Along with c-GEM, we are also planning future conferences during high school winter breaks, and we are currently in the process of planning a biotech hackathon. Additionally, we have many upcoming events to hold at our members' respective schools and school boards, through which we hope to continue to spread awareness.

The second was through STEAM-Design, or STEAM-D, a University of Toronto program run out of the Temerty Faculty of Medicine's access and outreach offices. STEAM-D is not a general enrichment program, it is a targeted one, built to bring high school students who face systemic barriers to higher education onto the St. George campus for a month over the summer, to give them exposure to health sciences through sessions led by researchers, graduate students, and practitioners, and to end in a design competition where the top teams win prizes and mentorship. Anthony, co-president of iGEM Toronto, did not simply visit the program, he took on a mentoring role in it, teaching a group of students the fundamentals of synthetic biology and guiding them through the design challenge. His team did not just participate, it won, taking first place against 15 other teams. What made this one matter was not the trophy, it was that the program reached students who might never otherwise encounter synthetic biology, and it showed that with the right mentorship a team new to the field can not only compete but win.

Campus Collaborations

Mentorship reached a small number of students deeply. Our campus collaborations reached a far larger number, and they were how we kept the top of the funnel full. Across the year we ran nine distinct campus collaborations at the University of Toronto, and the common thread was not passive presence, it was direct conversation: explaining what synthetic biology is, what PetaBite is trying to do about plastic, and what it actually looks like for an undergraduate to work on research at this level. Taken together, they put the project and the team in front of well over a thousand students. The per-event figures below are approximate and should be replaced with your real counts.

Ontario Universities' Fair (September 2025). We ran a booth at the Ontario Universities' Fair on September 27 and 28, 2025 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, Canada's largest university fair, which draws thousands of prospective students and families over two days. We spoke with roughly 115 students across the weekend about synthetic biology, the plastics problem, and what undergraduate research at U of T can look like. The lesson was not what we expected, it was how early the interest starts, since high schoolers deciding where to apply were genuinely drawn in by the chance to work on a real environmental problem.

Engineering Global Experiences Expo (October). We were invited to the Engineering Global Experiences Expo, an event that gathers offices, departments, and student organizations across U of T to speak with undergraduate engineering students about globally focused opportunities, from study and research abroad to global-engineering courses to organizations students can join. We were not a default invitee, we were invited specifically because iGEM Toronto's focus on biological solutions to global challenges fit the theme. We spoke with roughly 105 engineering students, and the takeaway was that framing our work as a global challenge rather than only a technical one is what lands with students weighing where to spend their time.

Undergraduate Research and Global Opportunities at Engineering. We exhibited at the Undergraduate Research and Global Opportunities event in the Faculty of Engineering, using it to walk students through the PetaBite project and explain what iGEM is and how to get involved. We reached roughly 95 students, and these were not passing conversations, they were with people actively looking for research to join, which made them some of the highest-intent exchanges of the year.

URSA Biotech Event (October). We collaborated on the URSA biotechnology event, talking with undergraduates about enzyme discovery and where the PETase work sits within biotech more broadly. We connected with about 90 students, and the biotech-focused crowd did not ask soft questions, they asked sharp technical ones, which was a good test of how clearly our members could explain the science on the spot.

EngSci Online Club Fair. We exhibited at the Engineering Science online club fair to reach students in one of the university's most demanding streams. EngSci is not a stream we ignore, it is one we actively recruit from, because so much of our work lives at the boundary of biology and hardware, the bioreactor array especially. We engaged roughly 110 students and learned that the hardware side is often what pulls in students who never thought of themselves as biology people.

Engineering Winter Fair. We took part in the Engineering Winter Fair to hold a presence with engineering students into the winter term. This was not a repeat of the fall fairs, it reached a different moment, catching students who had settled into their programs and were finally ready to commit to something beyond coursework. We spoke with about 85 students.

HMB Research Fair. We presented at the Human Biology research fair and talked with life sciences students about the wet-lab and enzyme side of PetaBite. We reached roughly 100 students, and this was not a crowd we had to convince of the biology, it was one already at home in it, so several conversations turned quickly into real interest in the wet-lab team.

Faculty Orientation (September). We presented at faculty orientation at the start of the year, introducing the incoming class and the faculty community to the team and the science behind it. We reached around 80 attendees, and the value was not the headcount, it was the timing, setting awareness of iGEM Toronto in the first week of term, which matters for recruitment more than almost anything else.

Frosh Handbook Spread (September). We secured a spread in the incoming-student frosh handbook, so that every first-year who picked one up saw what iGEM Toronto works on and how to get involved. This was not a high-effort initiative, it was our widest-reach placement of the year for the least work, reaching the full incoming cohort in print. (Add the handbook's print run for the real number.)

4. Regulatory Framework

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5. Sustainability Report

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6. Socioeconomic Report

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7. PETadex Stakeholders

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