Resilience shines through the iGEM 2020 Virtual Giant Jamboree
by iGEM HQ
If we could choose one word to describe the iGEM 2020 Virtual Giant Jamboree, it’s resilience. In the eight months since COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization, we’ve seen incredibly resilient iGEM team members, instructors, judges, committee members, sponsors and community members emerge as role models and heroes. And their resilience shone throughout the ten days for Competition, Community, Contribution and Celebration at the iGEM 2020 Virtual Giant Jamboree.
Yet resilience is not new to the iGEM community. While each and every person tapped into their own strengths to confront the challenges of this pandemic, the iGEM community has long sought to build resilience into our world by using the tools of synthetic biology to address food security, clean water, human health, biodiversity, climate change, and more. By engineering biology to create safe and responsible solutions for global challenges, iGEMers seek to make positive contributions to their local communities and society at large.
This year, 249 teams of student scientists and engineers from 36 countries and regions worked creatively and tirelessly to push the frontiers of synthetic biology – with or without access to a laboratory. These teams were the first-ever to present their amazing accomplishments entirely through digital media. For the first time, the Giant Jamboree featured the iGEM Video Universe for team presentations and promotion videos, as well as interactive spaces for poster sessions, workshops, committee tables, sponsor booths, networking events, and community gatherings. The ten-day virtual event focused on four aspects of iGEM – Competition, Community, Contribution, and Celebration – with over 6,000 registrants that commended the 2020 teams for their success in overcoming the challenges of this exceptional year.
An international panel of over 250 judges, the largest judging panel in iGEM’s history, cast their votes to select the winning teams. And the results of the 2020 iGEM competition were impressive, with 168 teams earning gold medals, 45 teams earning silver, and 26 teams earning bronze. And dozens more awards and special prizes recognized teams demonstrating excellence in each of 12 tracks and other categories. Nominees and winners of the grand prize in each division were:
Undergraduate:
Grand Prize: Vilnius-Lithuania (Lithuania) for developing “FavoFlo”, an integrated system to detect, treat and prevent fish diseases in aquaculture farms.
1st Runner-Up: Toulouse_INSA-UPS (France) for creating “iGEMINI”, an engineered nutritional yeast co-culture for food supplementation for astronauts during space exploration missions.
2nd Runner-Up: XMU-China (China) for engineering a rapid detect-and-degrade system to remove excess glyphosate herbicide from plant products like tea.
Overgraduate:
Grand Prize: Leiden (Netherlands) for constructing a modular technology – Rapidemic – to rapidly detect pathogenic species in future outbreaks.
Runner-Up: Aachen (Germany) for engineering “M.A.R.S.”, a biochemical energy recycling system to reduce cost hurdles for many production and research processes.
High School:
Grand Prize: TAS_Taipei (Taiwan) for developing a quick, accurate, home-detection kit for viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 and influenza.
Runner-up: GreatBay_SCIE (China) for creating a portable, easy-to-use test for detecting poisons in mushrooms.
Winners of two new special awards introduced for the first time this year were:
Best Sustainable Development Impact Award – a special award recognizing excellence in teams that integrally address the environmental, social, and economic challenges of our world – Fudan (Undergrad, China), TU_Darmstadt (Overgrad, Germany), and Lambert_GA (High School, United States)
Inclusivity Award – a special award recognizing exceptional efforts to include people with diverse identities in scientific research – Rochester (Undergrad, United States), Leiden (Overgrad, Netherlands), and PYMS_GZ_China (High School, China).
The accomplishments of the 2020 iGEM teams surpassed all expectations. They have forged new paths for pushing the boundaries of synthetic biology in spite of, or perhaps in some ways because of, the global pandemic. And we are deeply honored and thankful for the iGEM community in supporting the journey of this year’s teams and the teams that will follow.
There are many ways to engage with iGEM, and we invite you to:
Participate in iGEM by starting a team, becoming an advisor or judge, joining a committee, and more. Information and resources for participating in iGEM 2021 will be available here.
Learn more about iGEM and the future of synthetic biology by following the iGEM Blog and iGEM Digest.
Explore iGEM’s alumni program “After iGEM” for more opportunities to work toward a strong, responsible and visionary synthetic biology industry on an international level.
Begin your BioVenture through the Entrepreneurship Program Innovation Community (EPIC) that supports the development of iGEM’s entrepreneurial community.
Invest in the future by partnering with iGEM, exhibiting at future iGEM Giant Jamborees, or sponsoring iGEM teams. Contact: sponsor [AT] igem [DOT] org.
