This blog is where we share stories, announcements, and insights from around the iGEM community.
Two years, 359 days, and 18 hours. That’s how long it’s been since people have been able to join together in person for the most important global synthetic biology gathering. Today, iGEM is welcoming the world to the Grand Jamboree in Paris!
For the first time in nearly three years, the world’s largest SynBio community will be gathering in person for the iGEM Grand Jamboree. With over 40 different countries and regions represented, Jamboree participants bring with them a wealth of knowledge in different topic areas, and a diversity of expertise – from academic research to commercial ventures to governance and policy making.
This year, the Grand Jamboree will feature the “iGEMers Showcase” of returning alumni from all over the world who, along with talking about their current work, will share what they’ve learned from the iGEM Competition and how it has helped them grow and influenced their careers. We invite you to come and hear about their accomplishments.
The countdown to the final days before the iGEM 2022 wiki freeze has begun, and this year’s teams are no doubt feeling the pressure. This coming Monday (October 10) is World Mental Health Day, a day to “raise awareness of mental health issues around the world and to mobilize efforts in support of mental health.” While the wiki freeze is a memorable experience, it can also bring added stress to iGEMers already handling a heavy workload.
We invite you to meet the innovators who are shaping the future of the bioeconomy at iGEM EPIC’s Startup Showcase during the 2022 Grand Jamboree.
Registration is open now for the 14th International Workshop on Bio-Design Automation (IWBDA) to be held October 24-26, 2022 in Paris at the iGEM Grand Jamboree. IWBDA will bring together researchers from the synthetic biology, systems biology, and design automation communities to discuss concepts, methodologies and software tools for the computational analysis and synthesis of biological systems.
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.
In 2012, George Church, Yuan Gao, and Sriram Kosuri published their work “Next Generation Digital Information Storage” in the journal Science. Using DNA's four-letter nucleotide code of A, G, T, and C to encode the 0s and 1s of a digitized file, they were the first to demonstrate that DNA could be used as a storage medium. Fast forward to today, and you’ll see numerous developments in reading and writing different forms of data on DNA to make DNA storage more efficient and cost effective.
As the study of life and our environment, biology is inextricably linked to climate change and climate tech, and therefore holds the key to addressing the biggest challenge of our generation. By engineering biology, we can move away from fossil fuel dependency, decrease agricultural emissions, repurpose land, and stop plastic pollution.
At the Women in STEM (WiSTEM) Initiative by the iGEM Community, we aim to inspire and raise awareness for women and young girls to pursue STEM careers – both in industry and academia. As a part of this year’s event at the iGEM 2022 Grand Jamboree in Paris, we will be hosting a “Women in SynBio Symposium” to celebrate and highlight women in synthetic biology who are a major source of inspiration for the coming generations.
The future of synthetic biology has been debated among diplomats and academics, in government boardrooms and conference center hallways and, over the past few years, in countless zoom webinars. This year, iGEM is offering a new place for these discussions: the Responsibility Conference on the margins of the 2022 Grand Jamboree.
I wasn’t supposed to be at the 2011 iGEM Jamboree at all. I was working for a funding agency in the US Department of Defense. My boss was invited to iGEM to see what the competition was about. I was pulled onto his trip at the last minute. After arriving in Boston, I was informed I would serve as a judge in my boss’s place. He didn’t stick around for the whole weekend. I am still a part of iGEM 11 years later.
This Friday (August 12) is International Youth Day, an opportunity “to celebrate and mainstream young peoples’ voices, actions and initiatives, as well as their meaningful, universal and equitable engagement.” On this day, we’d like to celebrate the 70,000+ young people that have participated in the iGEM Competition, engaging with their communities to solve local problems and tackle global challenges using the tools of synthetic biology.
Bluepha has been born from iGEM and is now supoorting iGEMers throughout their careers. They share their story how they got here on this interview
As we prepare for the iGEM 2022 Grand Jamboree, I’d like to share with you the exciting developments that lie ahead on the road to Paris. In this post, the first of a series, I focus on the question: Why Paris?
Initially, team wikis were created using MediaWiki – a ground-breaking (at the time), open source, collaborative platform. But there have been tremendous advances in software development since then, most notably the creation of Git – a software developer’s dream.
From the moment the opening session of the conference began, what struck me was how similar the challenges are for emerging technologies across fields. Whether it is biotechnology, artificial intelligence, or smart cities, the same questions come up over and over again. In this post, I’d like to give an overview of three areas of overlap between synthetic biology and other emerging fields.
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