This blog is where we share stories, announcements, and insights from around the iGEM community.
The EPIC Venture Creation Labs concluded on 30th April, with over 30 teams from more than 10 continents undergoing our flagship entrepreneurship bootcamp.
“iGEM is about local people solving local problems everywhere in the world, and we see that in the projects that iGEMers do. We see there were problems iGEMers saw that some venture person in Silicon Valley would never pay attention to, but for iGEMers, in their environment and in their world, those were important.”
With over 340 teams (and counting …), we are looking forward to an amazing array of virtual events and activities where you will have an opportunity to meet and get to know your fellow iGEMers from all over the world.
It's no easy task talking about failures or blunders, even within the scientific community, a field wherein failure is a feature and not a bug. So, as assumed, writing this article was not an easy assignment. Our mistakes, failures, and blunders taught us invaluable lessons. But it was, just like our mistakes, a part of the journey, and the journey proved to be as crucial as is the destination.
Tomorrow is Earth Day. Observed on April 22 each year since 1970, Earth Day marks the birth of the modern environmental movement and is celebrated by over a billion people worldwide. Many important environmental events have taken place on Earth Day, including the signing of the Paris Agreement that established a framework to combat global climate change.
Imagine a community of more than 50,000 people, spread around the world, that share the same love and passion as you do for Synbio, innovation, open science and solving problems – that is the iGEM community. Now imagine expanding and strengthening this magnificent community through the Global Alliance of Regional SynBio Associations.
EPIC has successfully kicked-off our first event of the year, a Bio-Hackathon during the weekend, March 20-21, 2021, with around 160 biofounders participating globally.
Inside iGEM we have a strict Do Not Release policy that keeps our projects inside the lab. If these projects are ever going to be part of real-world solutions then – sooner or later – they will need to work outside of the lab. In 2021, we are substantially increasing the time and effort we devote to considering how to do that safely, securely, and responsibly.
It’s been over a year since the World Health Organization officially declared that COVID-19 was a global pandemic. At that time, we were uncertain whether iGEM 2020 would even take place. Thanks to the dedication of the iGEM community and the resilience of the teams, iGEM 2020 became one of the most amazing seasons, bringing with it new approaches and technologies for making iGEM accessible to everyone, everywhere.
We caught up with Sofia Sigal-Passeck, Co-Founder and CEO of Uniphage who are working on eradicating plant based bacterial diseases using combined power of bacteriophages and AI. Uniphage was part of iGEM EPIC’s 2020 program and Venture Creation Labs and we wanted to catch up on any updates since joining the community last year.
Access to clean, fresh water is a privilege many may take for granted. Yet, according to the United Nations, 2.2 billion people around the world lack access to safe water. World Water Day, held annually on March 22, is dedicated to raising awareness about the global water crisis and focusing attention on Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6: access to water and sanitation for all by 2030. In honor of this day, we’d like to highlight the accomplishments of iGEM teams tackling the global water crisis with synthetic biology.
The first iGEM Ambassadors were appointed in 2006 and charged with helping each team, in particular new teams, to ensure that they have a successful experience. Although this pilot program did not continue, many of the 2006 iGEM Ambassadors continued in their synthetic biology careers and remain connected to the iGEM community.
The iGEM Mentorship Program has been providing mentorship opportunities to iGEM teams and alumni since 2015. We at the iGEM Education Network have continued to analyze data from the program, to make improvements and better serve iGEMers around the world. This year we plan to launch two new initiatives – the Mentors Network and EduHall.
March 4th is World Engineering Day for Sustainable Development. In honor of this day, we’d like to highlight the accomplishments of iGEM teams engineering biological solutions for global challenges as articulated in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Currently, Africa is responsible for only 1% of scientific research output. By getting young student scientists involved in iGEM, we are facilitating the contribution and progression of research. By starting so early we are hoping this allows the developing countries across Africa, and across the world, to actually contribute and be an integral part of this revolution, rather than being a spectator for a while and becoming involved later on in the process.
iGEM is an international community of people from all over the world who are passionate about using synthetic biology to build that bright and better future. Today, we’d like to celebrate the many contributions from iGEM teams in countries where the Lunar New Year is recognized as a traditional holiday.
We caught up with Gregory Segala, founder of FluoSphera, who are overall winners of the Toulouse White Biotechnology (TWB) Startup Day ‘Go for it’ competition earlier this month on Feb 3rd! We caught up with Gregory to learn more about his experiences and to share his insights from his founder journey.
Do you remember the first time you ran a successful PCR? Was it in the last few months? The last few years? Or so long ago you don’t want to admit it? For high school students, that first successful PCR might have resulted on work from this year’s iGEM project. Let that sink in for a minute…
I did iGEM as a student and for the first time my work had a user. We had a concrete problem we were trying to solve; we had to think about a platform for our user to interact with our biology. I was working on a team of engineers, programmers, designers. iGEM forces you to take a wholesome approach to solve a problem, and that's just a perfect taste of the real life.
As iGEM EPIC matures into it’s 2nd year we welcome a new committee and new vision for EPIC V.2 in 2021. We caught up with Cheng Kai, iGEM EPIC Chair and Marjolein Crooijmans iGEM EPIC Co-Chair to learn more about their thoughts and visions for 2021.
