The Phoenix Project: Rising from the Competition
Congratulations on having come this far in the iGEM 2021 Competition! You’ve made it through wiki freeze, and soon you’ll be enjoying the camaraderie and celebration of the Giant Jamboree. But have you thought about what happens after the competition has ended? How will you stay connected to the iGEM community? And what will become of your project?
Since 2004, iGEM teams have been creating exciting, impactful projects just like yours. A handful of these projects have lived on as published academic papers, or have formed the basis for PhD projects, or have grown as start-up companies. However, many of the most imaginative and innovative projects have been simply left as wikis, without a clear path to enable others to move those projects forward. That changes now … enter the Phoenix Project!
The Phoenix Project is a platform that makes iGEM projects easily searchable and readily available so that future teams can build upon earlier projects.
The Phoenix Project is a platform that makes iGEM projects easily searchable and readily available so that future teams can build upon earlier projects. By building on previous projects, the iGEM community can make engineering progress on the important challenges our projects tackle. Already, the Phoenix Project has shown signs of success. For example, earlier this year the 2021 Costa Rica team were able to connect with the 2017 Peking team to learn more about data they wanted to use as input for a mathematical model. The Peking alumni were happy to hear their data were being used and were eager to help, and the Costa Rica team were thrilled to have their questions answered.
This is just the beginning. The more information we have about past projects, and the more insights the iGEM community is able to generate from your data, the stronger the Phoenix Project becomes. That’s where you come in … We want to know what happens to you and your iGEM project after the competition.
How to Get Involved
1 - Make sure your iGEM account is connected to your personal email address
Even when your university email expires, we can still reach you with updates and connect you with teams that may be interested in your project.
2 - Tell us about what happens to your project after the iGEM season
The more we know about your project, the easier it is for us to direct teams to use what you have already created. Let us know:
3 - Send us your Feedback
Check out the Phoenix Project, and reach out to us at phoenix [AT] igem [DOT] org to share ideas for making the Phoenix Project even better!
Together, we can create a rich repository of information that will help future iGEMers unlock the engineering potential of biology, and solve our global challenges using synthetic biology!
