Industry-Academia Cooperation: Biotechnology Winter Camp

Compared to the past, high school students nowadays have more options for them to apply in the field they are interested in. However, not all of them are able to figure out what they would devoted to in the future at that age. Although there is a lot of course information on the website, what they cannot imagine is how to apply the knowledge they learned from university to their career. To fill up the gap between school and workplace, universities began to invite companies to participate summer/winter camps. Moreover, this could assist students in exploring their interests.

During the winter vacation in 2021, BiOptic has been invited by several universities, in which we introduced our technology and help students understanding what biotech industries are working on in recent years. BiOptic chose the topic that is more related to their daily life by using the Qexp-FS Meat 5-species kit, which is used to detect 5 species of meat, including cattle, pork, chicken, goat, and sheep. This kit can be applied to food safety issues such as fake meat, fake vegetarian foods and Muslim food. Students will prepare random samples and experience the whole detection progress by using the BiOptic portable detection platform. Starting from sample preparation, students mixed their sample with our specially designed reagent, which can bypass the nucleic acid extraction progress. In the part of amplification, using Qamp mini, which works with a pre-programmable chip that can start the PCR process with just one button. At last, put the amplified samples into the Qsep series which can analyze and generate the report automatically.

BiOptic aimed to lower the professional skills demand for molecular testing at the time we designed this platform. Although these students does not really have bio-related background knowledge, they can still operate this platform in a short introduction, and this is the reason why we are selected by the institutions. BiOptic hopes that these students can be inspired and join the biotech industries in the future.