Collaborations

In our view, we see the collaboration as an aspect with great importance. It provides us with the opportunity to become more familiar with other team's projects as well as get inspired by their wonderful ideas. Moreover, it is an opportunity to take advantage of each team's skills. Thus, collaboration results in benefits for all teams. Considering this, we have tried to collaborate with as many teams as possible, to improve both our project and theirs.

BGU Meetup

Among the collaborations we participated in, we have attended a meet up hosted by iGEM Ben-Gurion team, where we discussed our ideas and were introduced to the other Israeli team's projects.

During this inspiring meeting, BGU has introduced us to Bio-Castle, a core element in our "synthetic bee stomach", while we offered our help in the modelling of their project.

Technion BGU Modelling Collaboration

BGU team have designed a system that would disable the development of mosquitos in the larva phase. They were interested to know how their pesticide-bacteria would affect the entire population of the mosquitos in the afflicted area. While they knew how to create some of the relevant mathematical equations, they were incapable of converting that knowledge into a MATLAB script. Nofar Cohen, who has overseen the modelling process in BGU team, has sent us a system of ordinary differential equations that we have converted to a script. After the initial model had been created in MATLAB, we have guided BGU team on the appropriate use of MATLAB coding, among them, the initial conditions needed, usage of matrices to describe variables and parameters, adjustment of the equations and the way which the results can be presented. Moreover, after their initial model had been completed, we have helped them to perfect the model and introduced them to various mathematical concepts that would describe their work in a more precise matter.

One Minute iGEM Challenge

The collaboration with another iGEM team provides us with not only an amazing opportunity but also a great challenge. It could be a difficult task to search and read information about so many projects and to search for a team that could provide you with suitable assistance. We had thought that an easy-to-use platform to get to know team's projects could pave the way for an initial introduction to the project and could enable teams from around the globe to be inspired from the team's project and also assist them in finding an appropriate partner for a collaboration: the person who is watching the video could think of a way to either help the team whose video they are watching or be assisted by them. Furthermore, the Facebook Pagecreated can be also used as an easy-to-use archive of the team's project, from there future iGEM teams could be inspired. We would like to thank all teams that have participated in this challenge and who have made it so fantastic: Team Tartu TUIT, Team Pasteur, Team Stockholm, Team Wageningen, Team IONIS, Team Thessaly, Team Moscow and Team Athens.

UNAMBG Storybook collaboration

Due to the great importance that we attribute to the public engagement aspect of iGEM projects, we were thrilled for the opportunity to assist other teams with this significant issue. Team UNAMBG from Turkey has written a remarkable children's book presenting their magnificent project as well as the topic of diabetes in simple words. Since they wanted to reach as many children as possible and to introduce them to the field of synthetic biology, a translation to many languages was required. We had provided them with such assistance and translated their book into Hebrew. Thus, their project is now accessible for Israel's new generation of biologists and scientists. We sincerely thank team UNAMBG for the opportunity to collaborate with them!

Mini Jamboree by Tel Aviv University

On October 6^th we were invited to attend the mini jamboree hosted by Tel Aviv University's iGEM group, alongside groups from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Tel-Hai College and MSP-Maastricht. This event was an amazing opportunity to practice our presentation and to show our primary poster, to get feedback from professionals and other teams members and finally enrich our knowledge about how to do better presentations by a targeted lecture.

Alongside the advantages of such a conference, we had a chance to get familiar with other teams and learn about their interesting projects.