Test Tube Podcast Appearance
University of Exeter hosted the “Test Tube Podcast”, a reoccurring audio show where teams discuss their project and take questions. This was an opportunity for us to spread awareness on the problems around phosphorus use, refine our presentation skills and learn how explain our activities in and engaging way.
Cambridge Circuit Design Collaboration
Cambridge team’s Foundational Advance project used Control Theory to create a synthetic biology system with robust expression levels against a defined reference point. We saw an opportunity to incorporate their approach into our project to overcome potential issues around maintaining expression when taking PhoBac from the lab into cold soil. After an in-person meeting, tour of their lab in Cambridge, a hearty lunch, and thorough subsequent brainstorming, we created designs to enable PhoBac to be a more practical and commercially viable product, and team Cambridge came away with insight into how to develop their system for potential real-world application. See Implementation.
Manchester Presentation Training
We had several meetings with team Manchester throughout the competition. We first discussed our projects and we came to learn of our common aim to remove phosphate from wastewater. We scheduled consistent meetups throughout the season to practice and improve our presentation. On our first meeting, we invited members from our university to sit in and give us feedback on our performance. In the second meeting the same format was held but the evaluators were invited by team Manchester. We received feedback from senior academics from Bath and Manchester and grading by a formal marking scheme, allowing us to identify weak points in our presentations and project design. We iteratively refined our presentations to be more engaging, explaining scientific details more concisely. As the academics came from different departments, we learnt how to develop a presentation for a general audience.
Virtual Symposium on Bioethics and Policy
We proposed and attended a virtual symposium for bioethics and policy with teams from Manchester, Hong Kong and Thessaly Greece, discussing safety and implementation in-depth. After outlining our projects, we went on to present the ethical or legislative considerations that stand in the way of implementation. Then, in discussion with experts from our institutions, we answered questions and discussed how to address these future challenges.
Triple Implementation
We collaborated with teams BioBrussels and iGEM Maastricht in the implementation of our water treatment projects. We worked together on a joint implementation in which all of our system would be simultaneously used. Read more about it at Proposed Implementation.