Collaborations

Canyon Crest Academy

Lambert iGEM met with Canyon Crest Academy’s (CCA) high school iGEM team several times during the year. We first met in late May, where we presented our project ideas, provided and obtained advice for future obstacles, discussed our team structure and management, and laid out our plan for the rest of the year (see Fig. 1). Starting in early August, we began discussing potential collaboration ideas and provided suggestions for improvements to each of our human practices. For example, we shared our vision of creating a heart-healthy multicultural cookbook to acquire recipes and advice from the team. However, our most important initiative resulted from meetings every other week: a collaboration on an educational synthetic biology safety video for new iGEM teams or biotechnology labs. First, we planned out the topics and ideas for the video into a template and graphic organizer. Then, both teams created scripts on various laboratory equipment aspects and their safety procedures while individually recording each segment within our respective labs. Lambert iGEM edited and incorporated both teams’ clips into a comprehensive video to publish on Youtube and distribute to the public (see Fig. 2).

Figure 1. Our first planning meeting with CCA

Empire Gene

We collaborated with Empire Gene to critique and evaluate our respective projects and presentations (see Fig. 3). Furthermore, we offered to test or design portions of their mathematical models. In addition, Lambert iGEM agreed to help distribute surveys testing public knowledge of stroke attacks, further supporting Empire Gene’s project.

Figure 3. Our most recent meeting with Empire Gene iGEM

Other Collaborations

Waterloo

Similarly, with Waterloo iGEM, we organized virtual meetings to discuss project outlooks and future collaborations, giving and receiving guidance in the process. They also sent several local canadian recipes and contributed to the North American region of our cookbook.

Makerere University

To expand our outreach with teams from other countries, we worked with Makerere University iGEM from Uganda. We listened to their presentation, included comments on their project and delivery, brainstormed frugal hardware initiatives, and offered to test some of their hardware designs on our 3-D printers. Finally, we requested several Ugandan recipes for our inclusive cookbook, further increasing its cultural diversity.

Tec-Chihuahua

Additionally, we helped Tec-Chihuahua create a comic compilation detailing the project interests of numerous iGEM teams. We sent a short graphic that showcased our project idea, diagnosing coronary artery disease, to distribute to elementary and middle school children in their area (see Fig. 4).

Figure 4. The CADlock comic sent to Tec-Chihuahua

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Cookbook

We decided to create an inclusive cookbook to increase the threshold of our outreach (see Inclusivity). We reached out to numerous international teams, such as Waterloo iGEM, USP–eel, and REC–Chennai, and added about 4-6 recipes to our cookbook. Because the recipes were unique to each team’s country of origin, they directly contributed to the diversity of the cookbook while helping maintain the cultural integrity of the recipes provided.