On Sept. 10, iGEM held a youth debate on campus that focused on the use of synthetic biology as a strategy to solve world hunger. iGEM is an annual synthetic biology competition held in Boston, in which teams from around the world create projects with the goal of making a positive impact on their communities and the world at large.

As part of the competition, the teams engage in community outreach to increase local awareness about the importance of synthetic biology research. To further this cause, the NYU Abu Dhabi iGEM team hosted a youth debate on campus in collaboration with the Ministry of Youth Affairs. The topic up for debate was: “Supporting the use of synthetic biology is a better solution to world hunger than supporting food policy programmes.” Her Excellency Mariam bint Mohammed Saeed Hareb Al Mehairi, Minister of State for Food Security in the UAE, served as one of the judges.

This year’s NYU Abu Dhabi iGEM team is focusing on improving food safety through synthetic biology. “[We are] working to build a food pathogen detection device that amplifies DNA-specific to food-borne pathogens,” said Imtiyaz Hariyani, a member of the 2018 NYUAD iGEM team. “The Youth Debate challenged me personally to think outside of my own biases as a Biology major, and to take into consideration existing food policy programs to support advances in synthetic biology to address the issue of world hunger.”

The NYUAD Arts Center hosted a double bill of musical pioneers on Sept. 12 and 13. Love and Revenge is a project by Lebanese hip-hop artist Rayess Bek and visual artist Randa Mirza. Their performance consisted of a mash-up of Western electronic and traditional Arab folk music, all mixed live to a backdrop of clips and images from Egypt’s golden age of cinema. The goal of the project is to revive the Arab golden age in a way that is more engaging and relatable for younger audiences.

The Canadian DJ crew, A Tribe Called Red, performed the second half of the event. Their music is a blend of hip-hop, reggae and dubstep, influenced by the music of the First Nations. Since its inception, the group has advocated for better rights for First Nation peoples. The use of chants and drumming is largely taken from First Nations culture in an effort to preserve their traditional music.

“The show was honestly fantastic, at some points thrilling, at some point hypnotic, but entertaining the whole way through. I’d like to see more things like that happening on campus, especially on weekends,” said Jacob Chagnon, Class of 2019, who attended the event.

Green House, a climate change think tank that focuses on climate change diplomacy, hosted a Mock COP event on Sept. 14. COP, which is short for the Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, is an annual conference hosted by the U.N. with the objective of getting countries to agree on reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. For the past few years, members from Green House have attended the conference as members of the UAE youth delegation. In preparation for this, Green House hosts a mock version of the conference every semester.

“Mock COP is a great way to get first-hand experience of what the negotiations are like and the challenges countries face to reach any sort of agreement,” said Gauraang Biyani, Class of 2020 and member of Green House.

Green House uses software that allows participants to set countries’ contributions to emissions reductions and calculates how much this impacts global temperature increases. This year’s Mock COP managed to prevent global temperatures from rising by more than two degrees Celsius by the end of the century. The outcome was not reached without some commotion. China tried to use the negotiations to increase their geopolitical power over developing countries by providing aid on the condition that they become members of China’s One Belt, One Road initiative. This prompted a bidding war with the U.S. and the EU. However, a deal was ultimately reached.