InParis Meet-up

Following discussions with the iGEM Pasteur team at the Meet-up organized by the iGEM Bonn team, we took the opportunity to participate in the organization of the InParis European Meet-Up with the other Parisian teams: iGEM Pasteur Paris, iGEM IONIS and iGEM GO Paris-Saclay.

After several brainstorming sessions started in early June with the 4 teams, we decided the most convenient date for hosting the event would be from July 25 to 27, 2019.

Our iGEM Evry Paris-Saclay team was mainly in-charge of the financial management. We had to decide what budget we will dedicate to the different expenses we were facing, mainly for the goodies, the buffets and various additional expenses, since the budget for the hotel and the travel is pretty inflexible. We also were in-charge of the registrations fees and accommodation for the 17 iGEM teams that participated in our event.

Two months of organization made the event possible. Each iGEM team manager was responsible for the coordination of her/ his team members in order to have the maximum members that can staff the days of the European Meetup. Our iGEM Evry Paris-Saclay team was composed of 6 people who were present all through the event. Moreover, we designed one of the logos of the Meetup, which represented the playful aspect of our activities.

By putting in place competitions and collaboration between the teams, the European Meetup permitted us to discover in detail the projects the other teams are working on. Discussions and exchanges were very helpful for the continuation of our project and gave us great outsider feedback for our own projects.

The spirit of collaboration between the Parisian iGEM teams made a very pleasant atmosphere to work in for the staff. This remains a very good experience for our team and we whole-heartedly recommend it to future Evry Paris-Saclay teams. Sponsoring is a key element in the organization of an event of such a magnitude. For this reason, all teams worked on it and contributed to the recruitment of new partners. We want to thank again our sponsors present at the meet-up who were: ESPCI Paris, Eurofins, Merck, New England Biololab, Pasteur Institute, Genopole and Chemistry Paris Tech. Also, we want to thank the iGEM Pasteur Paris, iGEM GO Paris-Saclay and iGEM IONIS teams for their collaboration and involvement in the organization of this event.

IN HOW MANY LANGUAGES CAN YOU TRANSLATE A COMIC? (Public Engagement and Education)

We created a short comic to explain synthetic biology and its usefulness in our project . We are inviting other iGEM team to translate this comic in the native languages of their team members. We truly believe it would help non scientific people to familiarize themselves with biology and to understand the possibilities brought about by synthetic biology. And why not make a mini-competition: which team can translate the comic in the largest number of different languages (not already done) ? Our team translated it into Frenchand English.

Moreover, we invite other iGEM teams to inspire from our comic to make their own and use it to the purpose of dissemination. It would be great to make this kind of tool usual for the next generation of iGEMers. More explanations can be found on our Public Engagement page about why we choose this communication medium.

Thank you to all teams that participated!

- iGEM AFCM-Egypt translated into Arabic

- iGEM CCA_San_Diego translated into Spanishand Portugese

- iGEM Bioriidl_Somaiya translated into Gujarati

- iGEM CU translated into Arabic Slang

- iGEM Hong_Kong_HKU translated into Chinese,Kazakh,Korean,Tajik,Kyrgyz,Russianand Turkish

iGEM Düsseldolf (Public Engagement and Education)

Their collaborative project aims to create a postcard explaining Synthetic Biology or our project. Postcards will be used by the teams participating in the various events they organize, including Public Engagement and Education. Thus, our team decided to illustrate our project with a comic on the front and our abstract on the back.

iGEMXSDGS, collaboration between iGEM Tuebingen, iGEM Costarica and iGEM TAS_Taipei (Science)

The collaboration aims to promote the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) defined by the United Nations, by associating our project with one to four SDGs. This will highlight global collaboration that can lead to change and sustainable development. Thus, our team determined that our project fell into the categories "Good health and well-being", "Responsible consumption and production" and "Life on land".

iGEM Wroclaw (Public Engagement and Education)

Their collaborative project is about the creation of a comic, with photos of iGEMers from other teams to explain their project. Thus, we contributed by sending some photos, which are present on the second page of their comic strip.

You can find our participation on their page

iGEM Stony Brook

The Stony Brook team launched the #labcoatchallenge challenge where they invited each team to walk around with a lab coat, which will be transformed into a dress worthy of major fashion houses by tying only on the model. Thus, we were not allowed to cut blouse, sew it, use duct tape, etc. Here is our fashion show with our fat-bulous models Cécile Prince and Suzanne Phengsay.

iGEM GO_Paris-Saclay

The GO Paris-Saclay team wants to mix Synthetic Biology with poetry. They invited each team to write a haïkus in all languages. Haikus are Japanese poems composed of only 3 sentences of 5/7/5 syllables, respectively. They classically reflect the fleeting beauty of Life, expressing ephemeral but strong feelings. We have participated with this haiku in French:

“Un jour la brise

Le second s'éclaire car

La lune se réveille”