Vienna X UCL
Building a Partnership
The team from UCL and we share the common goal to make building materials more sustainable. While our approaches to achieving this are different, there are also a lot of similarities. As we are both working on creating bricks, we regularly met up to discuss our progress, share protocols and methods, and give each other tips.
"Partners in Bricks"
UCL's iGEM team this year is working on creating a sustainable alternative to cement, by engineering bacillus subtilis to produce calcium carbonate and combining it with sand, a hydrogel, and mycelium to create functional bricks.
Timeline
Help in the Wet Lab
As we were both working on making and testing bricks, it was important to both our teams that we work closely together in the lab so that together we can provide the biggest possible advances in our field. We had a shared benchling project folder where we uploaded all our protocols and results so that the other team has access to it and can use it to base their experiments on it. In our regular meetings, we discussed any difficulties that arose in the lab and troubleshot together.
Hardware Store and Homeworking survey
We wanted to assess whether our project has a future, so we are currently in the process of conducting surveys with potential customers. To reach the right target audience, we are conducting the survey both in person in hardware stores and online in homeworking Facebook groups. Responses to the following questions are being collected:
- “How important is addressing climate change to you?”
- “How important is sustainable living to you?”
- “How likely are you to buy environmentally friendly alternatives to everyday products?”
- “Are you willing to pay more for alternative sustainable products?”
- “What percentage of the global CO2 emissions do you think the Construction industry produces?”
- “What do you think produces more CO2: 10kg of cement or a 50km drive by car?”
- “Have you heard of biomaterial alternatives to concrete?”
- “Would you consider using biomaterial alternatives to concrete?”
- “How comfortable are you with the idea of using genetically modified organisms to create alternative construction materials?”
- “Would you feel threatened if the biomaterial contained dead microorganisms?”
- As well as statistical data regarding the age of the participant and the country they live in.
Coding with Biology Seminar Series
Together with iGEM UCL, iGEM Cambridge, and iGEM Sheffield we wanted to address the fear of coding, that many biology students have. We organized a webinar series open for all interested university and high school students, consisting of introductory workshops in different areas of coding. In 4 interactive workshops, participants could learn the theory behind coding, and immediately try it out. That way we were hoping to reduce the initial intimidation and make sure, the participants learn the most.
- Workshop 1: “Introduction to Python”, organized by iGEM Cambridge
- Workshop 2: “Building Mathematical Models with Python”, organized by iGEM UCL
- Workshop 3: “Introduction to Metabolic Modelling”, organized by iGEM BOKU-Vienna
- Workshop 4: “Introduction to Data Analysis in Julia”, organized by iGEM Sheffield
Partnership reflection.
Working on the bricks together with UCL was greatly beneficial for both our teams, as we could combine our resources and because of that be one step closer to our common goal: more sustainable building materials. In our regular meetings, we were able to share any issues we ran into while working on our bricks and help each other to find solutions for this, and the benchling folder provided us with the opportunity to work closely together and base our experiments on the other team’s result, making our research extra efficient.