When it came to collaboration, we knew that we wanted to work with another team that is nearby and has experience in the iGEM competition; therefore, we decided to reach out to a team from the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) known as Austin_UTexas. Once getting in contact, the members of the UT Austin team invited us to tour their campus and labs, followed by a meeting to discuss our goals for our collaborations.
Campus and Lab Tour
On July 17, 2022, six members of the TAMU team made their way to downtown Austin. Upon meeting everyone, the UT students gave us a tour of all of the campus buildings, letting us know the history behind them, told us about statues and art displayed around the campus, and even took us to visit a pond full of turtles. Throughout the tour we discovered the many things this campus has to offer and that future collaboration would be very beneficial.
First Meeting
Once the tour came to an end, we made our way to a conference room located on the campus. Here we further discussed our project aims and designs. Our first topic of discussion was communication, a topic we had previously touched on among emails. Since we were amidst creating a podcast and coloring book, UT members suggested creating their own episode of a podcast in English only, as well as adding a few pages into our coloring book. In exchange, our coloring book would be distributed among summer camps that would be visited by the UT team. Additionally, we discussed creating a fun activity for children to participate in while they plan on going to a school to teach young kids.
After discussing communication, we asked for advice on various topics in order to succeed in this competition. It was extremely helpful to talk to a team that has already participated in the competition, especially since this was our first year. During our meeting, we discussed how to create the most optimal way to organize our lab notebook, how to format our "Parts" page, and their approach to achieving all requirements to win a gold medal. Additionally, the UT team gave us great advice that they received from their mentors and ideas to improve our project for following years.
