Our team organized the first national French Meet-Up during the summer. It took place from Thursday, July 7th to Saturday, July 9th at the INSA Toulouse Campus. Representatives from nine out of ten french teams were present, which made a total of 32 students. We also invited researchers and industrialists, who brought the number of participants to about 50.

Figure 1: Group picture of the students

Goals

This Meet-Up had multiple goals:

• i) improve the design of each project through open questions and discussions with the students and the scientists,

• ii) provide training for the Giant Jamboree by doing presentations,

• iii) and create (at our level) a scientific seminar around synthetic biology. We also wanted to strengthen the French iGEM community. It was a good opportunity to get to know each other as French teams and to bond over synthetic biology, iGEM and our projects.

Sponsors

We had the honor to organize this Meet-Up in partnership with the BioEco graduate school (“Ecole Universitaire de Recherche pour une Economie Biosourcée”) who was a huge provider for the Meet-Up. They provided us with financial support by paying for the meals and the transportation of two people per team. They also helped us in the organization area : we had several meetings with Lauren Arata, project manager at EUR-BioEco and Carole Molina-Jouve, manager of the BioEco graduate school.
The BioEco graduate school is a project involving universities, engineering schools and laboratories from Toulouse and around Occitanie district. BioEco proposes international masters and doctoral positions, as well as several summer schools each year. The overall goal is to provide projects and training around bioeconomy.
INSA Toulouse was also very helpful by letting us benefit from its premises.

Figure 2: EUR logo

Before the Meet-Up: the organization process

The first idea

The first person that suggested the idea of organizing a Meet-Up was Stephanie Heux, one of our supervisors. She is a member of the BioEco graduate school and was hoping that a collaboration between them and our team could be achieved. She suggested to settle a Meet-Up during one of our weekly team meetings. Charline, Juliette and Laure were very enthused to organize it, and convinced BioEco to help us financially in this adventure.

Meetings

Meetings were organized with the main members of EUR. The first one was to convince them to help us even though our project was not bioeconomy-related. They agreed to give us financial support. Then we started to think about the programm, to contact the other French teams and have a meeting with them, to think about the communication strategy… We had a few more meetings with BioEco to explain the achievement we reached regarding the organization of the event. We were also in contact with Patricia Jarry from INSA Toulouse that created the website for registrations and with Lauren Arata from BioEco that helped us a lot in the organization of the project.

Getting in contact with French teams

Charline started to contact French teams on social media in April. The idea was to ask them if they were interested in this event and if they were willing to come to Toulouse. We also checked if we contacted every team with the list of participants from the iGEM website, but registration was not closed at this moment so we had to be careful not to forget anyone. We had a first meeting with all French teams to explain our vision of the event, to inform them about what would be paid or not by the sponsor and to discuss. Then we created a group chat where we could easily contact each other.

Figure 3: First meeting with French teams

Organizing the accommodations and transportations

The teams were able to be housed in student residences nearby INSA. When they registered on the website, they were able to book a room.
The transportation fees were reimbursed for two persons per team. Everyone in the teams had to hand-in several documents so the sponsor had all the information to refund everyone.

Organizing the meals

Lauren Arata from BioEco was very helpful for organizing the meals. As she was working for the sponsor, she knew what budget was allowed for food and she took charge of booking the caterer. We had buffets from “Bocal en Boucle”, a sustainable, zero-waste and local caterer. Lauren also booked the restaurant for Friday evening, the MOAÏ.

Figure 4: Eating at the MOAÏ restaurant

Compose the jury

To make the Meet-Up “Jamboree-like”, we had a jury composed of three researchers and one PhD candidate. They were present during the meet up and asked questions about every project. They also gave really valuable feedback and advice to everyone and we deeply thank each of them again for their time.
To compose the jury we recruited Sandra Beaufort and Isabelle Meynial-Salles, who are lecturers at graduate school INP-Ensiacet or INSA Toulouse and members of the EUR-Bioeco. We also thought to include a former iGEM participant in the jury. Younes Bouchiba (member of iGEM toulouse in 2018 and advisor of iGEM Toulouse in 2021) being now a PhD student at Toulouse Biotechnology Institute (TBI), the lab next to our laboratory, we asked him to be part of the jury. He was highly motivated. He helped every team by giving them a lot of feedback and advice. Everyone valued his tips because he has a great experience with the competition. Stephanie Heux is Senior researcher at TBI. Thanks to her background in the competition (she was a judge in 2018) she was also able to give valuable feedback to all the teams. She also created the judging tables inspired from the iGEM ones.

We thank the members of our jury very much for their implication ! More information about them can be found on our Attributions page.

Create the awards

To go on with our idea to make a Meet-Up “Jamboree-like”, we created awards for different prices. We thought it was a fun way to bring a stake to the event and it was also a good memory for them to bring back home. We had fun creating bricks on the model of the iGEM brick, and we greatly thank Fabric’Insa for their help in the elaboration of these prizes. They were machined and engraved in reclaimed wood to make them as sustainable as possible.
5 symbolic prizes were awarded by the jury but also the audience. The awards were :

• • Best pitch

• • Best presentation

• • Bioeconomy award

• • Audience award

• • Photo Rallye inter-team award

Figure 5: Awards for the Meet-Up

Organizing the campus and rooms

The day before the Meet-Up, we had to prepare the campus. We installed all the stands for the “Pitch your project” session, retrieved name badges and indicated the directions for rooms with arrows, as the campus is quite large.

Organizing the game

Juliette, Laure and Charline organized a “Tour” to walk around Toulouse as a photo-rally game. Charline constituted six teams, each of them composed of five members from different iGEM teams. The goal was to discover the city in a fun way and to bond with each other. Juliette created different pathways for each team with emblematic monuments from Toulouse. Each team had to take a specific picture at each place. To know where to go, the teams had to work together to crack rebuses that Laure drew. We also imagined a dozen other fun challenges. Sorry to non-French speaking teams, the rebuses won’t be understandable for you !

Figure 6: Rebuses for Toulouse must-seen places

During the Meet-Up: course of the three days

Here is the programm sent on the invitations.

Figure 7: Programm of the Meet-Up

Meals

Something we did not anticipate was how everyone bonded together during the buffets. We had so many interesting discussions with everyone during the meals. It was the perfect occasion to have a talk with everyone in a more informal way.

Welcome ceremony and conference

On Thursday, July 7th afternoon the welcome ceremony took place after the arrival of all the participants. We had the honor to be in the presence of Mr. Bertrand Raquet, headmaster of INSA Toulouse, Mr. Jean-Pierre Jessel, vice president of research at UT3-Paul Sabatier and Mr. Randy Rettberg, president of the iGEM foundation.
The welcoming speeches were followed by a conference by Lorie Hamelin, junior lecturer of an INRAE chair, entitled "Challenges and promises of industrial biotechnology in the transition to a low-carbon fossil economy". It was a great way to introduce the actions of bioeconomy and to start reflections on how to include more sustainability in our projects.

Pitch your project session

The conference was followed by a "Pitch your project" session. Each team were invited to present its project to the other teams, the public and the jury who were circulating in the room. Some teams chose to present a poster, others a model or a slide show. This session allowed for exchanges between everyone, which will give the teams the chance to improve their project.
The students as well as the researchers and industrialists present could ask their questions which lead to real discussions about the struggles the team face as well as the successes they achieved.

Figure 8: Pitch your project (Poster session)

Presentations

Friday, July 8th started with breakfast, followed by the official project presentations. Each team was able to present their work in English for 15 minutes. The presentations took place in front of the other teams and the jury members and were followed by ten minutes of questions. A very good training for the Jamboree!

Figure 9: Presentations of the teams

Discover the city

After the presentations on Friday, we spent the afternoon in the city to discover Toulouse through the photo rallye. It was a very successful team-building moment.

Figure 10: A few challenges from the photo-rallye

Closing ceremony

Saturday morning was dedicated to the award ceremony. The awards were received by:

• •iGEM Ionis: Best Pitch award

• •iGEM Montpellier: Best Presentation and Audience award

• •iGEM Sorbonne: Bioeconomy prize awarded by our sponsor BioEco Graduate School

• •“RUN" team: Inter-team prize for the Photo Rallye

Figure 11: Award ceremony

After the Meet-Up: conclusion from our team and reviews from the French teams

Conclusion from our team

The event was the best way for us to bond with other teams and discover the projects. We had occasions to have serious scientific moments with the conference, pitch and presentations, as well as other moments during the meals where we could just discuss in a more informal way. Friday afternoon was also a way to get to know each other outside of the iGEM context.
Every team was able to get valuable feedback and advice to improve their project. Everyone was also able to train for the Giant Jamboree by presenting their project in english and by creating presentations and posters.
The Meet-Up was the best opportunity we could have to improve our team spirit and our collaboration spirit. The judging grids were sent to the teams so they could see their results and improve themselves.

Review from French teams

iGEM Sorbonne

Our team spent a fantastic time training for the Giant Jamboree ! It was the perfect opportunity to meet the other French teams. During the Meet-Up, we discovered all the fascinating projects students were working on. We’ve also received feedback from professionals of the field which was incredibly helpful to improve our pitch and final presentation. The call with the iGEM president gave us further insights on how the Giant Jamboree will take place and that was quite reassuring. The intervention was related to our project which showed us other aspects that we could apply and promote. The Toulouse’s team wholeheartedly welcomed us and did a great job at hosting and turning this into an entertaining experience. In addition, we had the opportunity to visit “la ville rose” in a unique way, through a photo rallye where we could mingle with other teams. These two days were particularly busy but most of all memorable !

iGEM IONIS

The IONIS Paris team really enjoyed the time spent with the iGEM French teams. This Meet-Up showed us how rich the iGEM community is with the diversity of the projects. It also proved that iGEM is not only about science but that it is also a human experience that enables us to meet people from different backgrounds. Moreover, having the chance to practice our pitch and our presentation in front of professionals and ex-iGEMers was great since we were able to get important feedback to improve ourselves. For these reasons, we once again thank iGEM Toulouse team for inviting us and we can’t wait to see everyone in Paris.

Poster for iGEM Patras Med

They wanted to create a poster and social media publication with pictures and logos from all teams that were working on a diagnostic tool. We participated with pleasure to this project.

Figure 12: Our participation to the diagnosis tools project for iGEM Patras Med