This blog is where we share stories, announcements, and insights from around the iGEM community.
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.
In this exceptional year, iGEM teams have journeyed down a path that is different from any previous year, and far more challenging, exciting, and rewarding than any of us could have imagined. As we approach the eve of the 2020 iGEM Virtual Giant Jamboree (VGJ), we invite you to imagine your journey through the 4C’s of the iGEM VGJ: Competition, Community, Contribution, Celebration.
Each year since iGEM began, our community has gathered in-person to marvel at and celebrate the achievements of the teams in engineering biological solutions for global challenges and building the field of synthetic biology. Our in-person gatherings provided a wealth of novel opportunities for conversation, and fostered an easy and candid exchange of ideas and opinions, encouraged by the simple fact that everyone had left their offices and campuses behind.
We are excited to present this interview series to celebrate women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). The main idea of this interview series is to inspire the current and next generations of women and girls who are interested in science. For this series, we gathered speakers with diverse backgrounds and experience from different regions, all of them doing amazing jobs and leading their fields.
This year Nerea Capon co-founder of Labiome, (an iGEM EPIC start-up) offering women’s healthcare solutions using vaginal microbiota sequencing, was chosen to represent the iGEM EPIC community and check out this industry leading conference! We caught up with Nerea to learn more about the latest developments from SynBioBeta 2020….
You are probably familiar with Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, the archetypal cautionary tale for science experiments that are not responsible or good for the world. Did you know that Mary Shelley conceived of the idea when she was 18 years old and forced inside all summer with a small circle of family and friends?
iGEM EPIC’s Fast-Track Program was a two week event that connected exceptional EPIC BioFounder teams with relevant investors, incubators and accelerators partners to help provide potential funding, lab-space, and start-up resources.
The iGEM 2018 Interlab study, which was just published in Nature Communications Biology, presents a cheap and easy protocol for estimating cell count and per-cell fluorescence on plate readers.
Judges start learning about your project by reading your wiki. Then, when we’re filling out our judging ballots, we look over the wiki again to make sure we’ve remembered everything right. So what does this mean for how you tell your story?
Through iGEM Insights, we aim leverage data from iGEM as a unique open and international testbed to both improve the competition and the practice of synthetic biology (and science and engineering more broadly) beyond the competition.
All synthetic biology and modern biotechnology come with some potential to cause harm. Most of the time, especially for those still studying, these risks are managed by someone else.
As the teams develop and design their projects, they have to consider how their projects affect the world, and how the world affects their projects as part of Human Practices.
In 2016, iGEM Foundation started the After iGEM Delegate Program, for iGEMers to engage in the international policy dialogue on synthetic biology, experience the setting, and learn about treaties and protocols which influence how scientists conduct, share, access, and support research.
As iGEMers, we participate in the iGEM Competition because we believe that synthetic biology is going to change the world. By harnessing the power of biology, we are attempting to disrupt conventional business and manufacturing practices and create new value in medical therapeutics and diagnostics, energy and environment, food and nutrition, and developing new technologies to unlock the full potential of living systems.
It was through attending the Biological Weapons Convention as an iGEM Delegate that I realized how neglected biosecurity issues were and fully embraced the duty that scientists have to engage with policy-makers.
Even though there is a lack of legislation around the world governing biosafety and biosecurity, some teams have taken it upon themselves to make improvements and conduct science responsibly, safely, and securely.
Synthetic Biology (SynBio) is a field that has global involvement and impact. However, differences between regions necessitate a better understanding of individual nuances to enable the fullest potential of SynBio. To highlight these regional differences, EPIC in Asia-Pacific (APAC) hosted a panel discussion….
The iGEM 2020 Global Meet-up celebrated the diversity and international spirit of our community, with more than half of the events and activities organized by the iGEM teams themselves.
