Bringing Biology and Programming Mavericks Under the Same Roof. In Timisoara
Teenagers are always the population group referred to in the most controversial ways. They are perceived as promising or delusional, hypo- or hyperactive, impredictable or too linear…
When one tries to interact with and better understand the high-school studying generations from top Timisoara’s schools, two most prominent tribes will be easily identifiable: those passionate in coding and technology, projecting themselves as programmers and those passionate in biology, preparing for a medical career. “Kind of two separate worlds” you will say: different passions, different ways of learning, even different ways of socializing.
At BioCoderDojo we are in the middle of an attempt to bring these separate worlds together, offering them a common playground where they are supposed not to compete like future programmers vs. future doctors, but to work and exercise together their distinct set of knowledges and approaches, in an unique attempt to embark on a joint, equally exciting initiation journey in several cutting edge fields of science and technology with a scent of entrepreneurship, like bioinformatics, computational genetics, synthetic biology or e-health.
After a 2+ years long period of preparations we have conveyed a spectacular group of 60 kids, from 6 different schools, with a nice age dispersion from 13 to 18 years, a 43:57 girls:boys ratio, speaking a total of 9 different languages at conversational level, 31 of them being most passionate in Biology, 19 in Informatics, 5 in Mathematics, 1 in Physics, 3 in Chemistry and one in English Language.
They are in an overwhelming majority participants and awardees of various competitions, including county, national and international level olympiads in Biology, Physics, Informatics or Mathematics, but also a good number were laureates of CoderDojo Coolest Projects International, Climathons, Climate LaunchPad, space robotics competitions or various hackathons.
They are not only successfully competitive educational-wise, but they are also aggregating a spectacular set of passions, interests and involvement in activities you can find in this word-cloud!
With such an gifted army, through our activities we are chasing an ambitious list of aditional achievements. We’d like to get for each and every ninja a sensible advance in accumulating capacities like:
- Good understanding of contemporary social problems; Appreciating and advancing the values of open societies and free and open critical inquiry; Critical self-reflection;
- Deep knowledge of one’s own preferred discipline; Ability to integrate knowledge from several different disciplines;
- Locating, collecting and processing work-related information; Written and oral communication skills; Formulating creative/original ideas and solutions; Ability to present logical, rigorous, factual and scientifically grounded arguments; Ability to carry out research and produce new knowledge;
- Acquiring new skills and knowledge on one’s own; Ability to transmit skills and expertise to colleagues and other recipients;
- Networking skills; Functioning effectively as a team member; Leadership and management skills; Entrepreneurial skills;
- Command of English for academic and professional purposes; Integrating an international dimension into professional activities; Adapting to different cultural environments;
And, yes, this is not all! Besides being recipients of knowledge and professional skills, all of our ninjas will be part of two types of teams: the “competitive” teams, to initiate and develop an educational research project, and the “functional” teams, to contribute to BioCoderDojo Timisoara’s functioning as an organization and covering the following topics:
Events scheduling and attendance recording, Logistics, PR & Communication, Design, Connection with academia, International connections, Recruitment, Fundraising, Knowledge custody, Softskills development, Photo- & videograpy.
It probably looks complex and hard to achieve, but in pursuing all these plans we’ll never walk alone. There is a wide list of supermentors and experts that will join, guide, inspire and support our campaign, including academics, industry professionals, consultants. Individually and as a team they will multiply the involvement of the current co-champions:
Rodica Beicu is a biology teacher in Colegiul National Banatean, Timis, that joined about two years ago in the early planning times, promoting the concept to best Timisoara biology passionate kids, and joining in defining and running of this educational journey.
Dorel Deaconescu is a seasoned engineering expert in HELLA Romania, who has embraced the idea couple of months ago, contributing his management knowledges and people skills, helping in refining the vision, guiding and inspiring the ninjas.
Radu Ticiu is a Timisoara tech entrepreneurship community facilitator and leader, creator of several tech communities and edu-facilitator, founder and champion of the initial CoderDojo club in Timisoara and facilitator of the national network of about 50 CoderDojo clubs in Romania.
In this initial phase we are gathering for our weekly session at TeMiriCe, a freindly coworking space for the youngest (future) professionals, still learning and practicing bio-programming, knowing each-other, grouping in teams and planning how to get to iGEM.org, the biggest synthetic biology competition in the world. We are also preparing to eventually start visiting seminary rooms and labs in several Timisoara organizations like Banat University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine, “Victor Babeş” University of Medicine and Pharmacy, OncoGen.
Want to find out more or to get in contact with us? Message us on BioCoderDojo Timisoara Facebook page. We’ll get back to you in couple of days. For urgent matters e-mail radu.ticiu@gmail.com.
Keep an eye on most fantastic bunch of kids of Timisoara!
