During the duration of our project, we interacted, collaborated and exchanged ideas with a multitude of teams around the globe. Ranging from synbio music videos to a three-day forum comprising talks, panel discussions, interviews and quizzes! Collaboration has been a golden opportunity for us to interact with teams who come from diverse backgrounds and nationalities, appreciate the beauty of how inclusive research can be, learn from each other and grow during the iGEM duration. Our fantastic collaborators have played a crucial role in moulding and improvising our thought process, project ideation and execution. We learned the importance of collaboration and interpersonal skills. The happy ending of each collaboration definitely brought smiles to our faces. Apart from spreading awareness on the project or synbio, we created a lot of joyful moments to cherish.
In time, brainstorming sessions with individual teams collated to collaborating with multiple teams at once and organising events at a much bigger scale. This enabled us to address a broader set of audience.
iGEM has grown as a global platform to discuss, address and tackle real-world issues with the aid of synthetic biology. Every year, a multitude of teams come up with novel solutions to address the problems faced by women and to make their life better.
Why not bring these novel and innovative ideas under one roof? We-Talk hails from this brainchild!
The idea prompted us to go for a grand collaboration! We had recurring meetups with teams iGEM IISER Tirupati, IISER Berhampur and IIT Roorkee.
Brainstorming session
Common workspace
We brainstormed on the best way to raise awareness about these women's issues and decided to have a three-day forum comprising interviews, panel discussions, and talks with people and organisations that have made pioneering efforts to enhance women's lives.
Collaborators helped us with spreading out the word, coming up with ideas, finding speakers, drafting mail and designing promotional materials.
We-Talk
On the first day, we had a quiz session when Science meets fun, hosted by Tirupati. On the following day, a talk was organised by Dr. Indira Palo, Gynecologist & Obstetrician Doctor, on the topic of Menstrual Hygiene and Challenges in Adolescent Girls, which IISER Berhampur hosted. As a continuation to that, we had a session with Dr Prerna Lakhwani, Senior Gynecologic Oncologist, on the topic of Cervical Cancer & Breast Cancer hosted by IIT Roorkee. We wrapped up the session with a panel discussion, A round-robin among collaborators and an interview with Dr. Manjiri Bakre, CEO and Founder of OncoStem Diagnostics, hosted by IISER TVM.
IISER Mohali came up with a global survey to understand the general public's opinion towards genetic engineering and the application of synthetic biology and how much the respondents' educational background and geographical location affect their perspective towards GMO and Synthetic biology. With iGEM Mohali, Patras and AFCM Egypt, we released the survey. To go through the survey, check the education page.
Exploring how to incorporate diverse outreach activities into the theme of synbio, along with collaborators has been a fascinating experience. From the music vide, Syn-Vibe to the global lab tour video, we relish the experience of having collaborations with teams around the globe. We ensure that all the collaborators put active efforts in making science more inclusive.
Through some common friends, iGEM IISER Tirupati became our first collaborator and iGEM friends throughout the journey. Our journey with IISER Tirupati began back in May. The first meetup indeed turned out to be a platform where we exchanged project ideas and progress so far. It turned out to be a fun and interactive discussion where we brainstormed potential collaborations that could be undertaken with a bunch of exciting ideas from the synbio version of the TV show Family Feud, cool and fun-filled games like Jeopardy to a music parody video. After discussing with our teams, we decided to go ahead with the music video. With a fantastic set of lyricists, editors, videographers, and directors music video 'Syn-Vibe' started to brew up! Dance monkey and I don't care turned out to be synbio tracks!
Collab workspace & Teaser of the music video released on social media platforms
The music collaboration turned out to be a collab platform where we could discuss any of the iGEM queries and grow together. After a series of dance choreographies, music recordings, and cut-paste works, the music video was released with a bang. Here is a snapshot of the meetup, with members of both teams engrossed in discussions.
Find our youtube video here
A series of informative videos about the competition, synthetic biology, wet lab and dry labs in collaboration with iGEM Patras! It is essential to ensure that iGEM, the international platform for active discussions on synthetic biology research, becomes accessible to everyone around the globe, irrespective of nationality and language. In this exciting mission, we were able to be a part of creating the informative video in Malayalam, the native language of Kerala.
Find the youtube video playlist here
What if you get a chance to roam around labs around the globe, beyond the continents and oceans? We felt that as research students, it is our responsibility to introduce the laboratory facilities, not just limited to India but to the global research community, to inaccessible communities. We hope to give wings to the kids who dream of flying high but are limited by the barriers of land and language. As a first step towards that big dream, we collaborated with iGEM Patras, IISER Tirupati, Tec CEM, ABOA Finland and IISER Mohali to bring forth a mega lab tour video with snippets of lab facilities around the globe
A snap from the lab tour video
A brief but wonderful collaboration with iGEM Patras Med! On 25th April, World DNA day, we teamed up to create a fun-filled human DNA (hehe, us being the bases). Later, we joined hands in creating an Instagram post series putting forth project ideas of iGEM teams around the globe.
Team iGEM Vilnius came up with the idea of raising awareness of environmental issues on World Environment day. As their team focuses on water-related issues, featuring a water body in the surroundings, teams iGEM Ionis, Metathess, Tec_GDL, ABOA, iGEM Crete and Vilnius took part in the collab.
Celebrating DR G N Ramachandran
On the International day of the world's indigenous people, we took part in a cool collaboration by team iGEM Queens. We joined hands with them and celebrated Dr G N Ramachandran, one of the eminent scientists hailing from India who came up with the Ramchandran plot to analyse the range of protein confirmations, which stays as one of the best contributions to the field of structural biology.
iGEM, the global synbio community has been an incredible platform for discussions on novel ideas to tackle real-world problems.Throughout the iGEM duration, we got the opppurtunity to exchange our project idea, incorporate suggestions and troubleshoot our project with the help of co-iGEM teams.
An iGEM India get-together!
AIIM, hosted by iGEM IISc Bangalore, was indeed a platform for presenting our project and getting inputs from co-Indian teams, iGEM EPIC and experienced mentors. A three-day event comprising talks, presentations by the Indian iGEM team, mentoring session by iGEM Global committee member Varsha, an EPIC elevator pitch and an amazing poster session. Loaded with fun, we made friends from different parts of the country, people who are enthusiastic about the wonders synbio can create!
The epic collaboration evolved into an incredible partnership! It all started when iGEM UB replied to a collab request on slack. To our astonishment, we got to know that both teams are addressing the same issue using different components. With excitement at its peak to finally meet a group with a similar idea, we had our first meetup with UB. They were working on addressing Burkitt Lymphoma using external vesicles(EVs) as drug-delivery vesicles. In contrast, we were working on targeting breast cancer using bacterial outer membrane vesicles (OMVs) as drug-delivery vehicles. We had a couple of brainstorming sessions where we looked into the possibilities of an HP collaboration but later decided to go ahead with discussing the overlap aspects in the proposed implementation. Continuous meetings and discussions led to a partnership at a later stage.
Project discussion meet-up with IISER Berhampur
We started by exchanging project ideas; we figured out that one common element in both our projects would be that we are addressing women's issues. We discussed ways in which we could bring together iGEM teams to address and tackle women's issues. We brainstormed ideas such as a comic strip series through which we'd be able to create awareness.
Working on cervical cancer, we were excited to work on our common segments of the project. Meeting team, iGEM IIT Roorkee turned out to be an unforgettable experience where we exchanged our project ideas and realised the potential of collaborating in math modelling aspects. This could have been a long-term partnership; nevertheless, we were able to collaborate with them on We-Talk.
A chit-chat turned into a project exchange meetup! That's our journey with the iGEM ASIJ TOKYO team. Although their current project idea is to create an aptamer-based detection kit for Hepatitis B, they were working on developing a detection kit for breast cancer during the initial stages. We were thrilled when they approached us, saying they'd love to discuss ways to create awareness about breast cancer. We appreciate that their outreach efforts aren't limited to ongoing projects.
Team meet up with iGEM ASIJ_TOKYO
