Team:UiOslo Norway/Collaborations
We´re all in this together
BioBrick Tutorial
Organizing Team: DTU-Denmark
Attending Teams: Aalto-Helsinki, Lund, SDU-Denmark, UCopenhagen, Uppsala_Universitet, Stockholm, Chalmers-Gothenburg, UiOslo
In April we were lucky to be invited to the BioBrick tutorial in Copenhagen.Over the weekend we learned everything from how to pitch a presentation, how to find BioBricks, how the biobrick searching page work and rules for cloning work in the iGEM competition. The meetup was organized by DTU BioBuilders and several of the Nordic teams showed up. This meetup also allowed us to socialize with the other teams, learn how they work together as groups and systemize their work. As a result of this collaboration, we have tried to incorporate some of their good practices into our own project. In addition, seeing so many interesting presentations and meeting teams with new creative projects gave us extra energy to continue working hard on our own project.
SynBio Gone Viral Conferance
Organizing Teams: KU Leuven, Go Paris Saclay, Aachen
Attending Teams: UCopenhagen, Aalto-Helsinki, Potsdam, Rotterdam, TU Kaiserslautern, EPFL
From the 20th to the 22nd of September, four members of our team attended the SynBio Gone Viral Conference in Leuven, Belgium. During these two days we attended presentations about various research projects and how people managed to take an idea and build it into a business. Workshops were also held to improve our own presentation and project planning skills, and we got some guidance on how BioSol can be developed further.
The reason we wanted to attend this conference was mainly because we saw it as a golden opportunity to practice our own presentation in front of both experts and a relatively large crowd. We wanted as much feedback as possible to be able to prepare for the final presentation in Boston. By looking at other presentations we also got inspiration on how we can better our own.
Another important part of our motivation for going was getting the chance to know other teams in the competition. We all got to have fun together in addition to exchanging knowledge, which is really important to us. We think that social connection is a powerful glue in the science world and is what keeps us moving forward.
Translating Outreach Booklet
Organizing Team: Washington
The iGEM team in Washington contacted us and asked if we could help them translate an outreach booklet meant to introduce school students to synthetic biology through different activities. We were very happy to collaborate with them since we consider having a similar booklet in Norwegian to be valuable.
Making science fun is an important step toward motivating students to work with it. Having them work more with social and practical activities related to science also makes it easier to understand what working with science is like, and how the education received in school can be transferred to worklife. For this collaboration we translated the instruction papers and worksheets for 13 different activities, accounting for around 100 pages of text.
Translation of Comic
Organizing Team: Evry Paris_Saclay
The Evry Paris_Saclay team made a comic that informs others about synthetic biology. In addition, this collaboration transformed the translation of the comic into a fun competition between iGEM teams to see which teams could translate it into the most languages. Our main motivation for joining this collaboration was based on our common belief that information about synthetic biology should be easily available to the general public. From our own experience, we find that the public is not very well informed about how useful synthetic biology is for our day to day lives, and we think this is a fun way to present the topic. As our team has members from many corners of the world, we thought that it would be amusing to join the mini-competition.
Podcast
Organizing Team: Lund
Podcasts have become more and more popular in the past years and on the 28th of August, two of our team members had the opportunity to be part of a podcast interview with the Lund team. In the podcast we talked about our own iGEM project, what inspired us, how we work together as a group, and some of the challenges we have faced. In addition, we compared experiences with the Lund team. Overall this collaboration has been a great way of sharing the exciting opportunities made possible by synthetic biology.
The podcast can be found here.
Postcard
Organizing Team: Duesseldorf
In July, a number of iGEM teams sent a postcard of their own creation to the Duesseldorf team. The idea of the collaboration was to design a postcard with an inspiring picture and text of the team’s project, or something related to synthetic biology. When all the postcards from the participating teams arrived in Germany, a collection of all the various cards were sent back to each team, so everyone would get each others cards. When received, these postcards could be distributed to other students, the public, or just be kept by the iGEMers; all depending on what the team wished to use them for.
From looking at the awesome postcards from previous years, we can admit that we wanted to have a set of postcards ourselves to use as decoration for our “office”. As a result we figured it would be fun to dig out our creative side and join this collaboration.
SDGxiGEM Challenge
Organizing Team: Costa Rica, Tuebingen, TAS Taipei
The United Nations (UN) has set 17 sustainable development goals (SDG) that should be achieved by 2030. All of which were intended to improve various situations throughout the world. Through the SDGxiGEM challenge, the three organizing iGEM teams are making other teams more aware about the SDGs and helping them consider in what areas their projects can apply to the initiative.
We wanted to be a part of this collaboration because we see BioSol as an important contribution in environment and energy, and wanted to share the advantages with the public. While working on the challenge we learned more about the UN goals and became more aware about how we as private persons can ensure that the goals are met.
Building an International iGEM Team Well
Organizing Team: Lambert iGEM
According to the UN, more than 2 billion people are living with risk of reduced access to freshwater resources; and by 2050, if nothing is done, it’s been calculated that at least one in four people is likely to live in a country affected by chronic or recurring shortages of fresh water. The iGEM team at Lambert High School in Atlanta, Georgia started a fundraising to help the non-profit organization, the Thirst Project. Through this project, the goal was to earn enough money to build a well for a community in Eswatini (Swaziland).
We wanted to engage in this project in order to spread awareness and motivate others to join us and help this important project.
Let´s fight food allergens together
Organizing Team: Strasbourg
The Strasbourg team wants to create a tool kit that detects food allergens. Since most people know someone suffering from some kind of food allergy, we know a product like this is really needed. Therefore, we wanted to contribute as much as we could to make this happen.
Demographics and inclusivity survey
Organizing Team: UAlberta
This survey on inclusion disparities around the world was aimed at getting an overview of the composition of different iGEM teams, as well as everyones’ experiences with their own team. This was done to see if having a more diverse group would affect the group’s interaction in general. We interact with people from different cultural backgrounds on a daily basis and we think it is important for all people to feel welcomed in all parts of society. In addition, since we are a multicultural team with members from 4 different countries, it was especially important for us to be part of this collaboration.
Menstrual waste survey
Organizing Team: MITADTBIO Prune
MITADTBIO Pune are working on improving the menstrual waste degradation process so it will decrease the health risks for people handling the waste products. The process will also result in less toxins being released in the environment. We found some of the information they provided to be surprising, and we think that such a project is much needed.
Ovulaid quantitative market analysis
Organizing Team: UCopenhagen
In the past few years more and more people have dared to discuss their problems getting pregnant, as being open about these kinds of issues will make it easier to find help when it’s needed. UCopenhagen's project is a result of this trend. Their team is working on making a gum that can be used as an ovulation test and we can definitely see its importance. We want to help the team and hope their product will someday reach the market.
Tick-borne diseases survey
Organizing Team: Moscow
This survey was made to map people's attitude toward tick-borne diseases, like Borrelia and Lyme disease. The Moscow team aims to make a biosensor to check ticks for pathogens. Tick-borne diseases are not very prevalent in Norway, but we recognize the topic as a major issue in other parts of the world and believe this is an important topic that must be addressed.
Biosecurity survey
Organizing Team: Kings College London
The organizing team is performing gene therapy by using viral proteins. By designing this survey they wanted to know about bio-security protocols in different institutions. We we believe that security is an important part of the scientific world, we wanted to contribute to their assessment of the international situation.
Our survey
Participating teams: Uppsala, UCopenhagen, Tuebingen, Strasbourg, Warwick, Aalto Helsinki, Go Paris Saclay, Montpellier, Hamburg, Duesseldorf, Moscow, Chennai, Tec-Monterey, Nanjing-NFLS
We would like to thank all teams taking their time to answer our survey. We wanted to include both the general public and other iGEM teams, and as it turns out the greater portion of our 122 respondents are iGEMers. The answers we received helped shape our project to be better suited for the market need.