We realized iGEM is not just a competition for biologists. The whole idea is based on bringing people with different backgrounds together for the cause of science. However, “common” science terminology might not be understood by everyone. We wanted iGEM to be more welcoming to those without a science background interested in joining the community.

We determined that an educational project would be an appropriate way to carry on the collaborations between our team and iGEM GO Paris-Saclay 2022, after the successful generation of a GETHICS forum in 2021. With their help and input from Chalmers-Gothenburg 2022, iGEM Uppsala 2022, iGEM Stockholm 2022, and iGEM Aalto-Helsinki 2022 - the “Synthetic Biology Handbook For Baby Labrats, First Edition” was born. The book's main goal is to give novice iGEM:ers an easier start into a “biologist” work environment. By providing simple explanations of technical words, a summary of general safety symbols and security features in the lab, the first hurdle to start in iGEM by at least understanding what all the scientists are talking about will hopefully be overcome. Furthermore, this is a working document. Future iGEM teams can add more definitions by creating a new editions and the handbook will be evolving, just like science. More information, about our collaboration, can be found here.

We had the pleasure of collaborating with iGEM Stockholm 2022, iGEM Aalto-Helsinki 2022, and The Kings School, a high school team from Sydney, Australia, in a presentation workshop on September, 26th. With the Giant Jamboree presentation being the final step of our journey, we want to get some input before presenting our project to the judges and maybe even thousands of people. Therefore, we invited a professional science communicator - Olle Bergman. With his experience in public speaking, education and communication but also being well familiar with the structure of iGEM, he was the perfect candidate to help us overcome past struggles and insecurities about our presentations. In the designed workshop, everyone presented their project according to the Jamboree criteria. We also engaged in scientific discussions with other participant teams and learned more about developing trends in Synthetic Biology. Feedback from the other iGEM teams and Olle on general presentation skills, slides and overall content focus helped everyone feel a bit better prepared for the upcoming presentation in Paris.

The 2022 Rochester team was initially contacted by our webmaster, Nils, when he inquired about the difficulties integrating R-shiny applications into GitLab websites. This led to debates on how to organize the wiki work, develop a user-friendly wiki, and technological issues like how to show certain types of content like PDFs, photos, and downloadable files. Each of our wikis and communications is inspired by us. The collaboration involved multiple Zoom sessions and Slack conversations to aid each other with wiki-page formatting concerns. Both teams were successful in enhancing their wikis, communication channels, and website layout. Through the use of our wiki collaboration, a significant portion of the cooperation was devoted to integrating our models into our wikis.