On the road to Paris: It takes a village
The proverb “it takes a village to raise a child” has been attributed to African cultures, where it conveys the message that it takes many people to provide a safe, healthy environment for children so they can develop and flourish, and to be able to realize their hopes and dreams. Teams who participate in the iGEM Competition are surrounded by their own “villages”; thousands of instructors, advisors, mentors, caregivers, and friends who support them and help guide them towards success.
At the iGEM 2022 Grand Jamboree this October, iGEM’s global community will reunite in person for the first time in three years. And even though they join to compete, iGEM’s participants have always been united by a shared goal: to use synthetic biology to solve real-world problems.
We want to take this one step further, and embrace the Jamboree event for what it is: the largest synthetic biology gathering in the world. While we have the biggest cohort of passionate synbio enthusiasts in one place, participants will not just compete, but also collaborate around the world’s most pressing problems, to share and learn from each other through Jamboree Villages. Our new Jamboree Villages present a unique opportunity for Jamboree participants so they can develop, and flourish, and realize their hopes and dreams for the field of synthetic biology.
Anatomy of a Jamboree Village
Villages at the Grand Jamboree are exhibition areas dedicated to the most important topics in the world. The Villages will provide space for not just iGEM Competition participants, but the whole iGEM Community to gather and present their work. They also create opportunities for all Jamboree participants to interact with the teams and the many companies and organizations joining the event.
Team Booths
iGEM Competition teams will each be given a Team Booth in their relevant track village at the Grand Jamboree. The booth can be thought of like a team's "home base", where they can create a display to showcase their project. You can visit teams at their team booth throughout the event, and especially during the daily Team Exhibition session!
Village Plazas
Central places to gather and watch Team Presentations, as well as Open and Featured Sessions that will highlight our community, sponsors, and other trailblazers in each village topic’s respective industry. In addition to their judging session, teams will present their projects to the public at their Village Plaza.
Village Topics
The topics for each village reflect the world’s most important concerns and initiatives to support development and growth within the field of synthetic biology.
Startup Village
iGEM’s Entrepreneurship Program Innovation Community (EPIC) supports iGEMers in their transition from lab to market through a year-long Entrepreneurship program. Programming in the Startup Village will include the Startup Showcase, panel discussions, mentorship, workshops, and awards. Join us in celebrating our startups, and learn how you can join the EPIC program for 2023 at the Startup Village!
Community Village
The iGEM Community, formerly known as After iGEM, supports the 70,000+ iGEMers who have gone through the iGEM Competition or who have contributed to any part of iGEM. The Community Village will feature networking events, meetups, and workshops, as well as the highlights from 2022 Community Programming, and sneak peaks for 2023 initiatives. All participants in iGEM are already part of the iGEM Community! We invite you to visit the Community Village to see what we have prepared for you.
Leagues Village
The iGEM Leagues are local and regional initiatives designed to give more people an iGEM experience. Ultimately, leagues seek to build synthetic biology ecosystems everywhere and for synthetic biology to be developed by everyone all around the world. The Leagues Village, located alongside the Community Village, will feature the current work by the Design League from Latin America, and this year’s new Indian League competitions. We also challenge you to think creatively on how you might implement a league in your region - If you want to organize one, we can support you in creating a proposal and the next steps.
There will also be Villages dedicated to the iGEM Competition Tracks that bring together teams solving local problems and tackling global challenges within the world’s most important topic areas.
Climate Crisis Village
During the last century, the accelerated rising of Earth’s average air temperature due to the combustion of fossil fuels has had disastrous effects on the global climate. Learn how teams are developing technologies to remove greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere, improve the existing energy sources, advance industrial and agricultural processes to reduce the emission of pollutants, and exploring unique approaches to addressing the climate crisis using the tools of synthetic biology.
Environment Village
The quality of land, water, and air limits the happiness of Earth's inhabitants. Check out how iGEM teams are applying synthetic biology to clean the air, provide fresh drinking water, restore eroded lands, enhance soil quality, and explore how these technologies could be applied to space travel or assisting in terraforming near-Earth asteroids.
Conservation Village
Environmental destruction, monocultures in agriculture, disease, and other human activities have affected the health of plants, animals, and their ecosystems for a long time. Learn how teams are developing synthetic biology solutions for protecting endangered species, preserving biodiversity, safeguarding environmental health, combating antimicrobial resistance, promoting social insect health, and reversing anthropogenic extinctions.
Food & Nutrition Village
Everybody needs to eat. But with over 7 billion people on the planet, the problem of producing enough food is complex and multi-faceted. Come see how iGEM teams are using synthetic biology to responsibly reduce food waste, produce food or nutritional molecules, address local issues facing farmers, identify and treat agriculturally relevant disease, detect food spoilage, and address nutritional deficiencies without harming the environment that future generations will inherit.
Diagnostics Village
Many medical conditions can be successfully treated if only they are diagnosed at an early enough stage. Check out how teams are engineering faster, cheaper, and better diagnostics techniques to improve access to medical treatment worldwide, through projects focused on CRISPR/Cas9, vector-borne diseases, public health and pandemic preparedness, and microfluidic devices.
Therapeutics Village
Many health and medical problems can best be addressed with new and novel therapies. Come see how the teams are using synthetic biology to improve techniques, technology, and access to novel therapies such as RNAi/siRNA viral vectors, biofilms, gene therapy, vaccines, probiotics and nutritional supplements, fertility, contraceptives, uterine health, and UV/radiation prevention.
Foundational Advance Village
The iGEM Competition relies on a number of foundational technologies such as BioBricks, standardization, and high-throughput quality control. Come see the novel solutions developed by iGEM teams to advance core synthetic biology technologies, such as developing a novel chassis, creating new hardware tools, refining techniques for DNA assembly and DNA data storage, and addressing biosafety concerns such as biocontainment, release, and dual use.
Biomanufacturing Village
Biological systems can be used to make products under conditions that were previously impossible. Many enzymes can achieve reaction conditions in a tube that would otherwise require high temperatures, pressures or expensive substrates to reproduce using chemical engineering methods. Learn how teams are using synthetic biology to manufacture useful products, perform micro-scale production of high-value molecules, and produce engineered tissues such as new skin or organs.
High School Village
High school teams participate in the competition in the High School track. Much like collegiate teams, High School teams identify the world’s most pressing problems and aim to address them using synthetic biology. Teams are encouraged to work on a topic they're passionate about. The High School Village will feature truly impressive synthetic biology projects created by high school students from all around the world.
The Villages at the Grand Jamboree are one of the exciting developments to enable participants to witness the future and interact with tomorrow’s leaders of synthetic biology. Beyond Villages, the Jamboree will also feature Partnered side-events such as the Responsibility Conference with people from academia, government, and international organizations, the Fourteenth International Workshop on Bio-Design Automation (IWBDA), and the Women in SynBio Symposium by iGEM Community. We will explore these events in future blog posts as we travel together on the road to Paris!
We look forward to welcoming you to the iGEM 2022 Grand Jamboree! Buy your tickets here to secure your place among the world’s largest community of synthetic biology researchers, industry, investors, startups, and policy makers.
