Team:Warwick/Collaborations
Collaborations
Westminster & UCL: UK iGEM Meet-Up 2017
Together with The University of Westminster and University College London, we co-hosted the UK iGEM meet-up for 2017, which was a great success!
https://2017.igem.org/Team:UCL/Collaborations https://2017.igem.org/Team:Westminster/Collaborations
Day 1
18/8/17
The first day of the meet began at 10am with team registrations at The University of Westminster. Each of the thirteen teams handed in their posters and then we all introduced ourselves to the other iGEM members over breakfast. Many of us had travelled from far and wide with very early starts, and so coffee was consumed in abundance!
We then heard from different speakers, who gave interesting, insightful and varied talks about different areas within synthetic biology.
After lunch, each group had the opportunity to present their poster and peer-review the other teams. It was fascinating to see such a diverse range of project ideas, conveyed and presented in all sorts of different ways. We can’t speak for the other teams, but for us it was a really useful opportunity to put together a draft poster in preparation for the Jamboree. We were inspired by the other posters and have since altered our layout and design to make it more eye-catching and accessible for readers.
The day ended with an iGEM social event, kindly hosted by Westminster in their SU building.
Day 2
19/8/17
After a well-earned rest, we all assembled at UCL in time for a morning of debating! Each team was split up and their members mixed with other iGEMers. These smaller teams of 4 or 5, were then given contentious ethical issues linked to the field of synthetic biology. We were given some time to prepare arguments either for or against the topic in question, before embarking in heated debates! The topics chosen by UCL made us all take a step back and really think about the ethics and safety of the field, which in turn helped enormously when we came to look at our own Human Practices.
After lunch, everyone travelled across the Thames to meet at the iconic tallest building in the UK – The Shard. This was our contribution to the UK meet and we used it as an opportunity for teams to practice their presentations. As the event took place in mid-August, we were aware that not all teams had finished their research yet, and so teams gave a condensed, 10-minute version of their Jamboree presentation. Once again, this was a great chance for teams to find out what they do well and what they need to work on.
Emzo De Los Santos, a research fellow at the University of Warwick kindly came to give a short talk on how he came to work within the field of Synthetic Biology. His research has both computational and experimental aspects, which is indicative of how interdisciplinary SynBio is. We wrapped up the UK iGEM Meet with cocktails in the Aqua Shard bar, on the 31st floor of The Shard. Taking in the Panoramic views of London was the perfect way to end a very successful and valuable weekend.
The two days were obviously a good way for us all to meet the other teams, talk about synthetic biology and practice our presentations, but there were also lots of opportunities for teams to say "we need some help with coding" or ask "is anyone here a cellulose expert?". Some of the problems that teams raised were solved there and then, whilst others developed into official collaborations between teams after the event. The collaboration between ourselves, Westminster and UCL in organizing the event provided the perfect opportunity for teams to troubleshoot their projects and gain invaluable advice from their peers.
We hadn’t met either Westminster or UCL before the event, and so we organised the entire meet via Skype sessions and instant messenger alone. We were so pleased when all of our hard work came together, and we got feedback from all of the other attending teams saying that they had had a really enjoyable time and had found the whole weekend to be very useful.
Bristol: iGEM Development Environment (IDE)
As we’re sure that most other teams have found too, Wiki editing can be a real pain. We had played around with making changes early on in the summer, but found it quite frustrating that it wasn’t possible to make real-time changes quickly and easily. You can imagine how relieved we were when Bristol iGEM contacted us with their collaboration proposal… IDE allows local development of your Wiki, which means that edits can be viewed almost instantly by simply refreshing the page.
Bálint, Shafi and Amy organized a Skype session with Albert, Billie, Nick and Jonathon from the Bristol team to find out more about how IDE could be useful for our project. We all agreed that it was a really smart idea, and signed up straight away. The instructions for how to use IDE were concise yet comprehensive and Jack, our computer-coding-wizard of a team mate made short work of understanding how the software operated.
Thank you very much Team Bristol for making our Wiki experience (almost!) stress-free!
