We had the honor to promote the iGEM spirit and strengthen our international bonds by collaborating with teams from over the whole world. We shared our knowledge and experience in a fun way as you will see on this page where we elaborate our collaborations. We established a partnership with team Vienna and team Wageningen, which can be found on the partnership page. The picture above was taken during the JuniorJam and was shared with us by WWU_Meunster.
We decided to host a collaboration with iGEM teams from all over the world, in which each team would have to record a short podcast episode about a scientist that overcame adversity and troubles and achieved great things in their respective fields. Our goal with this podcast was to encourage other iGEM teams to persevere despite the problems that they could run into. For example, we decided to do our podcast about NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson, who overcame the boundaries of race and gender at her time, to calculate the math necessary to launch the 1st US astronaut into space. This way we wanted to also point out inclusivity, science is for everybody. We received submissions from over 9 teams, explaining why they chose their scientist and how they can apply what they learned from their chosen scientist's perseverance into their lives and in their current iGEM teams. It was interesting for both us and our listeners to learn about great scientists and the struggles they overcame to excel in their fields. The podcast can be found on Spotify for everybody to listen, making it accessible to people all over the world. The participating teams were: iGEM Tec Monterrey_GDL, iGEM Tec Chihuahua, iGEM Patras, iGEM UMA, iGEM NCKU, iGEM UNSW, iGEM NYCU, iGEM Ionis, iGEM Kyushu University.
On September 7, 2022, our team decided to host iGEM’s Den, an online event where iGEM teams from all over the world had the opportunity to present their projects and get feedback from judges in preparation of the Grand Jamboree. iGEM's Den was based on the famous TV series Dragon’s Den where entrepreneurs pitch their business idea to investors that decided afterwards if the business is worth investing into or not. The teams that participated in iGEM’s Den are: iGEM Wageningen, iGEM Exeter, iGEM INSA_Lyon1, iGEM Estonia TUIT, iGEM Nanjing_NFLS, iGEM UIncheon, iGEM CUHK-HongKong-SBS, and our team.
During iGEM's Den, each iGEM team had 20 min to present their team’s project. After their pitch, the judges would give live feedback on the team’s presentation, whether it just has to do with the presentation itself or details of the project. Judges also filled out an evaluation form with helpful feedback for each team to help them improve their pitch for the Grand Jamboree. The judges were either professors specialized in the topics of the presenting iGEM team, or they were previous iGEM members that, with their experience, could help them by providing beneficial guidance to the presenting iGEM teams. It was very interesting to hear other teams’ projects and see all the different approaches they are taking. It was also very beneficial to receive advice from experts in the fields we are working in, in order to be more prepared for the Grand Jamboree. The event was also live streamed on twitch, giving an opportunity for other teams to watch the event and learn from the judge’s feedback as well. The link to the recording can be found under figure 4.
The iGEM team from Exeter invited us to participate in an episode of their podcast "The Test Tube Podcast”. The purpose of this podcast episode was to discuss inclusivity and the inclusivity award in iGEM. We each talked about the steps we were taking to make our project and our teams more inclusive and how important it is in the science world to highlight this problem.
That is why we are so glad that the inclusivity award is an award in the iGEM competition, it would bring a lot more attention to this topic and encourage more teams to stay inclusive. On the podcast, we discussed our own personal experiences with discrimination in STEM and on how we think inclusivity should be implemented better in STEM. We explained our opinion that it is important to teach kids from a very young age that they can pursue any career that they wish to pursue and we should show them role models in STEM of all genders and backgrounds to make them feel as though the possibilities are endless. The iGEM team from Exeter also explained to us the steps they were taking towards inclusivity such as designing a pipette tip that is more suitable to use for people with disabilities. We also explained to them what we were doing towards inclusivity such as our own podcast “Science Despite the Odds”. We discussed the goal of our podcast which was to encourage other iGEM teams and the public in general to persevere despite facing challenges on the way. It was a very pleasant talk of about an hour where we exchanged opinions and ideas
For the international science communication project of iGEM Aachen, we translated an educational text in Dutch about synthetic biology. They wanted to make the content easier to understand by writing the text as if a microbe is talking. He mentions his different friends which are other microbes and how they are useful in this world. This way people should understand more that synthetic biology is not a threat, but an ally for curing, therapy, diagnosis, etc.
Next to this, they also sent the little plushy microbe that is talking in the text in a package to us. We added a thread that resembles a flagellum on the plushy so they have a souvenir from each country the plushy goes to. We took a picture of the plushy microbe in front of the city hall of Leuven, the town where our iGEM team always works, labs, and encounters for general meetings. We got the plushy from team iGEM Maastricht and we sent it to the Finnish iGEM Aalto. Through this, it travelled the world and connected the iGEM teams and the Aachen team was able to set up a multi-lingual library of a text about synthetic biology.
In honor of the International Day of the World’s Indigenous people, we took part in the Instagram challenge brought forth by the iGEM team from Queen’s University. The challenge was to create either a story or post on Instagram about an indigenous scientist from the region our university is located in. We chose to post about the famous Flemish scientist Michiel Coignet. Born in 1549, Michiel Coignet was a Flemish polymath who made impactful contributions to many fields such as cosmography, navigation, mathematics, etc. He also contributed immensely to the development of many scientific instruments such as the astrolabium. We hope that by participating in this challenge, we encourage our audience and the iGEM community to show more appreciation to indigenous scientists who, despite having obstacles, contributed greatly to their respective fields.
To highlight how cancer affects lives, we participated in the initiative of ASIJ iGEM and iGEM TU Braunschweig to make an Instagram page to raise awareness for different types of cancer. We made a post about the risks, symptoms, and preventions, etc. of colorectal cancer, which our project is about.
Together with other iGEM teams who targeted other types of cancer, we made a beautiful collection of the most important aspects of each cancer. In total we focused on 6 types of cancer. The name of the Instagram page is: igem_spreads_awareness. We hope that with this initiative people are more aware of symptoms, diagnoses, and methods of prevention of cancers. Further, we also put the awareness post on our Instagram page as we wanted to help spread the message they bring.
During the dates 26-28th of August, iGEM Muenster organized a Junior Jam meet-up for different iGEM teams from Germany, Belgium, Austria and the Netherlands. A few of our team members (Michelle, Paula, Chris, Elias) went to present our poster and show our promotion video. It was a satisfactory event, since we got feedback on our project and promotion video, while seeing other teams projects and progress. Between teams we shared information about our main setbacks, and it was comforting to find support and help from other teams, while we tried helping other teams at the same time. There were also multidisciplinary and engaging lectures provided by professors of the university to follow throughout the day and workshops to improve presentation skills for instance. There were also ice-breaking games to bond with other teams in the evening. It was a joyful weekend away, which brought us closer with other iGEM teams and prepared us for Paris.
World environment day is held yearly on the 5th of June since 1974 by the United Nations to help people take a second thought about the impact their life has on the environment. In light of this day, we send iGEM IISER-Pune from Pune in India a picture where we are trying to make the world a better place.
The 5th of June 1974 was the first day of the Stockholm conference of the Human Environment. Every year there is a theme where they want to focus some extra attention on and another country becomes the host. This year Sweden chose sustainability. Kristina planted a sweet potato in her garden, as it is of rising importance to consume more production from your own country to diminish the negative side effects of transportation. Then the IISER-Pune iGEM team made a collage on their Instagram with all the pictures from different teams. We hope this raised some awareness to help sustain our planet.
For our fundraising event dedicated to raising money for the organization Stop Darmkanker, we collaborated with the iGEM team from VUB to host workshops for the attendees. It was very refreshing having a team supporting us with our cause and in exchange, we provided them with some advice about iGEM, as they were a newly formed team and they could enjoy some cakes we baked for the fundraise to thank them for the effort to come. At the Stop Darmkanker event, the iGEM team from VUB prepared a workshop in which they presented their project to the attendees, which was about finding a new and innovative solution for hard water. The iGEM team from VUB also attended the workshop about biosensors that our team had prepared for the event, showing their support for our cause. Overall, we were very happy to collaborate with the iGEM team from VUB on an important purpose, raising awareness and collecting money for colorectal cancer.
In order to have one last chance to practice our presentation and improve the last details, we decided to join iGEM Eindhoven’s MiniJamboree. ON 18th of October we are going to present our project to a knowledgeable jury. Later that day there will be a jury session where we will get feedback on how to ameliorate the message we are trying to give,and will we need to answer potential questions that the jury or public might have. That will give us possible new perspectives to take into account for our project. We consider this type of event on a date so close to the Grand Jamboree as a superb opportunity to face the challenges of presenting our finalised project under realistic circumstances.
We participated in a variety of surveys from other iGEM teams going from fish consumption of team HKUST iGEM from Hongkong to our knowledge about Alzheimer from another iGEM team. We also participated in the research survey of Planet Institute Paris to understand how iGEM organizes their work to be successful and creative. Further, we filled in the survey of the Human practices Fellow at iGEM about cultural differences and human practices.