CIU Laboratories Offer Community Service
Acting with the understanding of transforming the knowledge and opportunities it generates for the benefit of society, Cyprus International University (CIU) continues to provide opportunities for both its own students and students in other educational institutions to conduct research and observe the results of experiments in its laboratories.
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Doğan from the CIU Faculty of Engineering stated that they have adopted the principle of serving the society as a university, and added, “Universities have three basic missions: generating knowledge, disseminating information and serving the society. With the Biotechnology Research Center, Environmental Engineering laboratory, Civil Engineering laboratory and Mechanical Engineering laboratory within our Faculty of Engineering, we care about supporting secondary education in order to contribute to the formation of a working culture, and we offer students, researchers and sector employees the application opportunities they need.
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Doğan stated that within this context, Levent College 12th grade students visited CIU laboratories within the scope of A level Biology course and shared the information that with the students they carried out experiments using Microbial techniques in the Microbiology and Biotechnology Research Center laboratories.
Stating that the study consists of two parts, Doğan said, “In the first part, laboratory technician Dr. Huzaifa Umar and laboratory assistant Çağrı Nurçin explained the preparation of the growth or culture medium, sterilization and bacterial cultivation techniques to the students and allowed them to put this into practice. In the second part, the theoretical information underlying the PCR-QPCR techniques were explained by Peyman İnce, Lab assistant in the Biotechnology Research Center Laboratories, and then the students had the chance to see the PCR-QPCR devices in the Biotechnology Research Center laboratories and observe the case studies. In the last part of the study, RNA-DNA separation was made in a sample using Agarose Gel electrophoresis. Thus the visit to the Labs helped the students reinforce the knowledge they learned in their Biology course by applying it in the laboratory setting.”
Doğan also gave information about the services provided in CIU Engineering laboratories and said that while the Biotechnology Research Center enables microbiological, cellular and molecular research to be carried out, water, wastewater, microbiological analysis and material characterization studies are carried out in the Environmental Engineering laboratories. He also stated that while research on soil mechanics, asphalt, building and building materials are performed in Civil Engineering laboratories, material production works can be conducted with traditional and numerically controlled computer aided benches in the Mechanical Engineering production workshop.
At the end of the session, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering Prof. Dr. Serkan Abbasoğlu met with the students and evaluated the applications they conducted and presented their certificates so that the participants could use them in the future when filling out their university application forms.