iBiotech 2008 roadshow to hit four cities in Indonesia

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - "iBiotech 2008", a grand biotechnological roadshow will for the very first time be launched in four cities in Indonesia to introduce science, biotechnology in particular, to the public.

"iBiotech 2008 will hold interesting interactive biotechnological experiments for 7th and 12th grade pupils, spokesman for iBiotech 2008 Hosea S. Handoyo said in a press release in Jakarta on Friday.

The four cities are Jakarta on March 3 at the Rawamangun Lab School, di Bandung on March 5 at the Taruna Bakti Complex, Jl. Riau, in Yogyakarta on March 7 Maret at the Pharmaceutical Facultry of Gajah Mada University, and in Surabaya on March 10 at the Medical Faculty of Airlangga University.

Hosea said that actually bioteknologi has now become an interesting topic of discussions in the world of science in the last few decades. Through biotechnology the human race derived various benefits like in discovering new medical drugs and superior fruits.

Unfortunately, he said, in Indonesia the people has yet to be familiarized with biotechnology although Indonesia has abundant biotechnological resources. In the meantime, Indonesia has yet to properly apply modern biotechnology like enzyme technology and DNA manipulation.

However, generally people in Indonesia are already quite familiar with traditional technological products like soybean curd or tofu (tahu), fermented soybean cake (tempe), and soy cause (kecap), he said.

This program has been adopted from BioPop, a program on introducing science to the people in Europe with great success in Bologna, Italy, and in Delft, the Netherlands, in 2005 and 2006 by the Indonesian Biotechnology Students Forum (IBSF) with support of the Genomic Network for Young Scientists (GeNeYouS) of the Netherlands, and the Netherlands Education Support Office (NESO) in Indonesia.

The project also has the support of the Research and Technology Ministry in Indonesia, HAN University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands, the pharmaceutical faculty of the Gajah Mada University in Yogyakarta and the medical faculty of Airlangga University in Surabaya.

"IBSF has invited Terry Vrijenhoek, MSc., chairman of GeNeYouS, a young researcher, and a steering committee of BioPop to join us. Terry will introduce science which is not boring us," he said.