Science Giants Lounge

Hosted by IDT

Friday - Sunday - Room 207 - 9:00 am - 6:00 pm

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Sir Isaac Newton, 1675 Take a break from your hard work, relax, and remember some of the Giants in Science that have helped all of us get here. Prizes and refreshments will be provided at various times. Stop by Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 9:00 am until 6:00 pm and check it out!

Brainstorming Board

Friday - Sunday - HQ Table by Hall C - 9:00 am - 7:30 pm

Come visit us at the HQ Table outside of Hall C and add your voice to the Brainstorming Board! Markers and adhesive notes will be available next to the board. We will pose a new question every day during the Giant Jamboree and look forward to collecting your thoughts about the topic.

Build a Landmark

Friday - Sunday - HQ Table by Hall C - 9:00 am - 7:30 pm

Looking for a hands-on activity to de-stress during the weekend? Stop by the iGEM HQ desk outside of Hall C and build a famous landmark from your country using marshmallows and toothpicks! We’ll keep the tasty landmarks on display until the end of each day near the HQ Desk.

Meet Your iGEM HQ Rep!

Friday - Multiple Rooms* - 12:30 pm - 1:30 pm

Join us for a fun lunch break during the first day of presentations! Grab a lunch from the poster halls and then come meet your iGEM HQ Rep. After receiving our monthly emails and replying throughout the season, you can finally meet your HQ Rep in person! This lunchtime workshop is your chance to meet your HQ Rep and other teams on the first full day of the Giant Jamboree. We’ll be running a Q&A session to to break the ice and get an informal discussion started.

Locations:

• Ballroom A
  Ana Sifuentes and Traci Haddock-Angelli
• Room 302
  Vinoo Selvarajah and Kitwa Ng
• Room 304
  Maria Bartolini and Abigail Sison

Synthetic Biology Engineering Challenge 1

Hosted by Twist Bioscience

Friday - Room 208 - 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm

Can you be the hero the world needs? Design and build a synthetic biology solution to an unusual problem. Come work with other iGEMers to use your creativity and syn bio engineering skills to solve a science fiction dilemma. Best solution wins a prize!

InterLab Study

Friday - Room 304 - 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm

The iGEM interlab study is the largest scientific replication project in all of synthetic biology. It is intended to be both a significant collective scientific project and a fun educational experience. In this workshop, we will discuss the goals and implementation of this year’s interlab study, with the aim of figuring out how to make it even better next year. We will also present the results from this year’s interlab and compare them to the previous studies. This workshop invites all teams who participated in the interlab study, are interested in participating in the future, or who are interested in issues around scientific replication to come and share your thoughts!

Mentorship Workshop

Friday - Room 306 - 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm

Come learn about the AlumniGEM Mentorship Program! This year, we paired twelve mentors with eleven teams. These teams and mentors will share their experiences, and we will use their comments and yours to expand and improve upon our program for iGEM 2018. We will start the session off with a short summary of what the program has accomplished, hear from those who participated in it this year, discuss the future of the mentorship program, and then host an open discussion of iGEM mentorship in general. If you are looking to start or continue a new team, share iGEM mentorship ideas, and give back to the iGEM community, then we highly encourage you to attend!

SynBio Solutions

Hosted by Agilent

Friday - Room 310 - 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm

Discover technologies that accelerate the Synthetic Biology revolution. From the SureVector Next Generation Cloning System, providing user-friendly customization of cloning and expression vectors in a 20-minute reaction, to the QuikChange HT Protein Engineering System, enabling rapid creation of libraries of rationally designed mutants, to CRISPR/Cas9 research tools and more. iGEM teams using Agilent sponsored SynBio kits will have the opportunity to share their unique experiences.

Looking Ahead: Strategies for Publishing Your Results

Hosted by PLOS

Friday - Room 311 - 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm

Need help getting started on your iGEM report or do you just want to know more about the scientific publishing process? Join PLOS staff as they introduce the concepts and process behind the handling of research articles, from first submission to final publication and how that is changing as a result of new technology and novel ways of collaborating and critiquing work. We will also discuss the PLOS iGEM publishing project and how you can take part.

After iGEM: How to Avoid iGEM Withdrawal

Friday - Room 312 - 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm

You are nearing the end of your iGEM 2017 journey... so what happens next? You are in good company with 30,000 iGEMers around the world. Join us to learn more about our new After iGEM initiative. Meet the iGEM Ambassadors and hear their experience. Learn how you can avoid iGEM withdrawal and stay involved in the community beyond the competition.

Networking Bingo

Friday - Ballroom A - 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm

Networking Bingo will return during the Friday evening special events session! If you are looking for an opportunity to meet many fellow iGEMers, team advisors and industry affiliates, you should plan to attend this session. Participants will be given Bingo sheets with questions about iGEM and it will be your mission to get answers for all of them from someone else in the room. You will need to find someone from another team that meets each requirement and get them to sign your sheet. Prizes will be awarded!

High School Team Meet and Greet

Saturday - Room 313 - 12:30 pm - 1:30 pm

High school team members and advisors, bring your box lunches to this facilitated discussion. Join students from around the world to network and relax. Let’s develop ideas to enrich the iGEM experience for the unique needs of high school teams. Bring your best ideas to share and any lab hacks that you’ve developed. Meet your new best iGEM friends from around the world and make contacts for your next year’s collaboration. High school iGEM let’s be anabolic and build a better world.

Synthetic Biology Engineering Challenge 2

Saturday - Room 204 - 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm

Design and build a synthetic biology solution to a fun problem: There’s too much candy left from Halloween and we need your help to break it down using a syn bio approach! Come and work with other iGEMers to use your syn bio engineering skills to design a creative solution to this dilemma (besides eating all the candy!). You will have 30 minutes to work on your solution and present it to the group. Best solution wins a prize!

CRISPR Gene Editing: How it Works and How to Use it

Saturday - Room 304 - 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm

Named the 2015 Breakthrough of the Year, CRISPR/Cas9 has made efficient gene editing available to any lab, and has accelerated research across multiple disciplines. Since its adaptation for mammalian cell line editing, the technology has evolved at a very fast pace, and keeping up with the different CRISPR options can be a challenge. In this workshop, we will discuss how CRISPR has evolved and what reagents work best for which applications. We will also describe some tips and tricks for getting the most out of CRISPR in your experiments.

Women in iGEM: Support, Sustain, and Strengthen

Saturday - Room 208 - 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm

This workshop will highlight issues and solutions for diversity in the scientific community with a focus on women participating in iGEM. There will be lightning talks with updates from iGEM HQ about this topic, followed by a round table discussion session with the audience members. The session will kick off with our Gender Diversity Committee overview from Dr. Louise Horsfall (University of Edinburgh), followed by a brief discussion of the iGEM judging program from Dr. Kim de Mora (iGEM HQ) and a quick overview of gender diversity from the 2017 iGEM community from Dr. Traci Haddock- Angelli (iGEM HQ). We’ll then break into smaller groups to discuss topics about women in iGEM and in science in general, and it will end with a summary from each group.

After iGEM: International Policy

Saturday - Room 312 - 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm

From its definition as a new technology to policy makers drafting laws to control the exchange of genetic materials, international policy impacts synthetic biology. As such, iGEM has become more involved in the international conversation surrounding synthetic biology. During this workshop, we will talk about iGEM’s participation in UN events including the Convention of Biological Diversity (COP/ MOP) and the World Health Organization Assembly. We will also discuss ways that you can be involved!

The iGEMeta Initiative: Understanding and Improving iGEM Through Data

Saturday - Room 306 - 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm

There is growing interest in better understanding iGEM’s impact and operations, both to advance the competition and also to leverage its study as a microcosm of science and engineering in open, international contexts. iGEMeta is an initiative to bring together the iGEM community through data. Over the course of 14 years, almost 2,000 projects, over 40 countries, and 30,000 participants, iGEMers have been pushing synthetic biology forward. The amount of work and data generated by our community is immense and invaluable. During this workshop, we invite iGEM teams, judges and supporters to learn about our iGEMeta efforts, and join us by sharing their work or ideas on large scale analyses of iGEM’s past and future. We hope that our efforts highlight the best of iGEM and capture the scale of what our community has done and what else we might do together.

Modeling Synthetic Biology Systems with MATLAB and SimBiology

Hosted by MathWorks

Saturday - Room 310 - 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm

Mathematical modelling guides rational design of genetic modifications and enables synthetic biologists to better analyze and predict system behavior prior to fabrication. Modeling is an important part of synthetic biology and the iGEM competition. This workshop will provide iGEM teams with an introduction to modeling, simulation, and analysis with MATLAB and SimBiology using an example from synthetic biology literature. This session will provide an opportunity to ask questions as well.

Highlights include:

• Using graphical environment to build models of biological systems
• Simulating dynamics using ordinary differential equation (ODE) solvers
• Interactively exploring model sensitivity to parameters
• Streamlining model exploration via parameter sweeps and sensitivity analyses
• Extending modeling environment by running custom analyses.

Career Fair

Sunday - Rooms 202 and 203 - 1:00 pm - 4:30 pm

As part of the iGEM 2017 Giant Jamboree weekend, iGEM is hosting a career fair event on Sunday, November 12 to foster relationships within the synthetic biology community. This unique opportunity offers top employers a chance to meet with iGEM participants and discuss career opportunities. Be sure to bring plenty of copies of your resume or CV.

Exhibitors:

• FBI
• Ginkgo Bioworks
• New England BioLabs (NEB)
• Promega
• Rice University
• Twist Bioscience
• University of Edinburgh
• USDA/APHIS BRS
• Zymergen

Safeguarding Science and the Future

Hosted by FBI

Sunday - Auditorium - 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm

Meet with the FBI and participate in a discussion on the shared responsibility to protect the life sciences as a member of law enforcement or the synthetic biology community (whether you’re an iGEM’er, scientist, biohacker, investor, business person, or all of the above). Find out what it means to be a guardian of science.