Being the winners of the 2018 Nordic iGEM Conference, we had the honor of hosting NiC 2019. 8 teams - iGEM Lund, iGEM DTU, iGEM SDU, iGEM Stockholm, iGEM Uppsala, iGEM Alto-Helsinki, iGEM Linköping, iGEM UCopenhagen - attended the three-day conference which consisted of talks, workshops, a Mini Jamboree with a poster session and a project presentation. The teams had to present and defend their projects in front of experienced judges Julie Annemarie Zita Zedler, Chris Workman, João Ribas, and Carlos Vasquez Ochoa, gaining valuable experience and feedback.

❮ ❯

Picture 1: All the NiC participants.
Picture 2: Claudia and Jonas presenting the first small steps to our modelling.
Picture 3: NiC's poster session.
Picture 4: The amazing judges that helped make NiC possible.

Prizes

The participating teams competed for three prizes: Judges’ Award, iGEMers’ Choice Award, Best Presentation. We were very honored and humbled to win the audience choice and to share the best poster award with SDU. iGEM Linköping-Sweden much deserved won the grand prize: the Judges Award. So to keep up the NiC tradition, they will have the honor of hosting the Nordic iGEM Copenhagen in 2020!

❮ ❯

Picture 1: Ovulaiders with our poster that won best poster.
Picture 2: Ovulaid after winning iGEM'ers choice award!
Picture 3: Linköping-Sweden after winning the judges choice award.

Talks and Workshops

During the conference, we were delighted to host talks by iGEM alumni Christina Toldbo (Spacemoss, 2015) on Science Communication, a ‘Modelling for iGEM Projects’ talk by Casper Larsen (InCell, 2017), and Thue (Cosmocrop, 2016). We had an inspiring introduction to After iGEM by iGEM ambassador Thea Chrysostomou followed by a panel discussion facilitated by iGEM ambassador Will Wright and featuring alumni iGEM’ers Stephanie Michelsen (PharMARSy, 2018), Vykintas Jauniskis (SYNORI, 2017), Jonathan Asmund Arnesen (Spacemos, 2015), and Albert Anis (Lund, 2018). A highlight of the conference was the Nordic iGEM Conference Hackathon hosted by REBBLS, Helloscience, and After iGEM. This Hackaton brought together expert innovators from research and industry to identify and develop solutions to the SDGs.

Reference: ¹

Focus: Food waste

Inspired by the Sustainable Development Goal 12 "Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns"² we set a light on food waste at our conference. For this purpose we collaborated with Copenhagen based organizations Wefood and Foodsharing Copenhagen. These organizations provided much of the food for the conference; food that would otherwise have been destroyed and thrown away.

Anett and Signe chopping vegetables happily.

Support and gratitude

It was a very successful conference and we would like to extend our gratitude to our supporters that made the event possible and the judges for the great input. Furthermore, we are thankful for all the attendees for creating this unique learning environment where we could exchange our knowledge, discuss potential collaborations and had so much fun.

References

1. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/nordic-igem-conference-sustainable-development-hackathon-tickets-60866027928?fbclid=IwAR1xfAKYaByIjRm-i02XtDZ89dPoA80ykj4JUCcun1uVOQqyYrVX5-Pnf30#
2. https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-consumption-production/