Academic Societies at The University of Edinburgh

Returning back to university for second year is much easier than arriving for the first time. I already knew what to expect from the university life and I was excited to see my friends again. Although, academic workload for the second year is slightly bigger than for the first year, gained experiences could, hopefully, help me to panic less and work in a more efficient and relaxed way.  Therefore, I managed to set more time aside for societies and sports this semester. In this blog, I would like to describe few academic societies that I am a member of and that are in my opinion very worth joining.

First of them is the EUYSRA – the Edinburgh University Young Scientific Researchers Association.  The aim of this society is to bring together scientifically curious undergraduate students from various fields and encourage their scientific development. The EUYSRA is divided into seven departments. Namely, Biology, Chemistry Engineering, IT, Medicine, Physics/Mathematics, and Psychology. Each department offers to students interesting presentations by fellow students as well as guest speakers, debates and various social events. Moreover, the main objective of the EUYSRA is to enable students to work on their own degree independent research. Members of the association can propose own pioneering scientific projects that are carefully discussed and brainstormed during the departmental meetings. Consequently, groups of students, willing to take part in the research, present their projects to a research committee and eventually get funding, place in laboratories and equipment. This is, in my opinion, amazing opportunity! This semester I am working on the cross departmental project together with 5 other fellow students from Biology and Chemistry department. In 2012, a new dandelion plant Taraxacum pankhurstianum was discovered in Scotland. Plants from the same taxa were already studied and among other biological effects showed to possess anti-bacterial and anti-fungicidal properties. Therefore, the aim of our project is to test this new dandelion for anti-microbial properties. In case our tests are positive, Taraxacum pankhurstianum extracts could have potential to be used for food preservation or medical purposes. Lets hope that with some luck we will manage to push scientific knowledge about this Scottish dandelion a bit further. Finally, if I still did not persuade you about qualities on the EUYSRA society I would like to mention that although it was launched only in January 2012, the EUYSRA is officially Scotland's best student society in 2013!

Second society I would like to talk about is the Synthetic Biology (SynBio Society). Do you like science fiction? Then the SynBio is for you because it is bringing science fiction into reality. Synthetic biology involves making life forms that can do or produce things that may not exist in nature but are able to help solving some of the world's problems society is facing. For example, existing bacteria altered by inserting designed DNA can be able to produce a colour change in contact with explosives, or infected water, or air polluted by dangerous gases and so on. However, there are also many other options because scientific fantasy is almost endless. Synthetic biology is a very quickly expanding field. It uses knowledge from different disciplines such as engineering, chemistry, biology, philosophy, arts, business, politics, informatics and many others. I believe that if used with a great responsibility synthetic biology could have a huge potential for future. The Edinburgh University SynBio society offers many discussions, film productions and is the starting line for a competition called IGEM. The International Genetically Engineered Machine competition (IGEM) is the main synthetic biology contest in the World organised by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Taking part is not only hard work but also unforgettable experience.
At last but not least, I became one of the first members of The Triple Helix society at The University of Edinburgh. The Triple Helix is a global forum for science in society that has departments across the World. It is a student-run organisation that encourages critical analysis of legally and socially important issues in science and promotes the exchange of ideas. The Triple Helix’s aim is to publish articles on the online blog and in the bi-annual Science in Society Review. All articles are related to impacts of science on society. Authors come from different chapters how The Triple Helix departments at different universities are called. Chapters include the Yale University, National University of Singapore, University of California - Berkeley, Harvard University, Melbourne University and many others. The Edinburgh University charter was launched just few months ago as the second chapter in the Europe after the University of Cambridge. My job within The Triple Helix is mainly events organising and solving tasks in the production division. Hopefully, our chapter will follow the good performance of other chapters and will manage to organise some interesting events and publish articles by Edinburgh students in the Science in Society Review by next semester.

All these societies are great examples of learning more about diverse subjects in an entertaining and exiting way. They provide opportunity to broad student’s knowledge in their course area, explore other fields and acquire experiences with the scientific and popular writing, research, discussions etc.. Moreover, members can meet other people with similar interests and built lifelong contacts and friendships. So why not to try joining even academic society?