Human Practices

14. Hamburger Studierendentagung: An Introduction to iGEM a project featured by the UHH

This year iGEM Hamburg attended the Life Science student convention in Hamburg to promote iGEM and science by students in general. For starters retired professor Uli Hahn held an impulse talk about his career and the potential possibilities awaiting us. From about 300 attendees 50 students held a short talk about the results their recent graduation work. A lot of interesting topics were covered and discussed in detail in the following poster presentation. Among them were novel results in the fields of bone formation leading to clues in osteoporosis research, and MRT imaging based on doppler ultrasound technology with impressive live imaging of a fetal heart. We presented iGEM and how it is applied at the university of Hamburg including a short introduction about this year’s topic, multi resistant bacteria and a gallium-trojan-horse-strategy. During the breaks life science and medical companies and organizations had the opportunity to present themselves among some coffee and snacks which lead to an enjoyable overall atmosphere. To conclude the event Katharina Fegebank, our secondary major and senator for science and equality, congratulated the students for their presentations. Before she could leave we were able to have a couple of words with her about a possibility to support iGEM in Hamburg and how to potentially involve students from universities from all over Hamburg.

EU Meetup Delft

To begin with it was great! And I recommend the attendance on regional meetups for every iGEM Team that has the possibility to do so. Sadly, only a small part of our team could participate since we had to cover 100% of the costs by ourselves. However, we were still able to send one member of any division that we have, so Martin (Chemistry), Sören (Nanoscientist) and me Shanti (Molecular Life Sciences and Teamleader) faced an adventurous trip to the beautiful city of Delft.

And boy adventurous it was. Starting with the selection of a decent route and to find the correct mean of transportation. After a couple of hours, we thought that we were ready to go, but man what did we know? So, our chosen route was to fly to Brussels from Hamburg and take a bus from there to elft, it should be cheap and fast and nice.

Well the flight was; however, we could not take the bus we wanted had chosen and had to go by train to Delft. Next, we found out that the travelling system in Belgium and the Netherlands differs majorly from German standards and that we had to pay waaaay more than expected. Well at least for me hence I am old, at least that is what I was told. But the weather was nice and we arrived in Delft ahead of schedule.

Shortly after our arrival we decided to explore the beautiful city in an attempt to find our hostel. First, we wandered around somewhat clueless, showing of our map reading skills, but then changed to more modern methods of navigation. Which was a good idea because we were actually lost beforehand. We could find our hostel quite easily utilizing google maps, but it was still closed so we decided to have lunch and contact our host team in Delft to meet them in advance of the planned dinner in the evening. After getting lost again, or let’s say some more exploring, we could find the TU Delft and meet the iGEM team of Delft. They briefly introduced us into their campus and we had an interesting talk about each other projects. As it turned out, we were trying to tackle the same problem from different angles, Delft wanted to invent a crispr-casper utilizing detection method for multiresistant bacteria that then could be utilized in stockbreeding. And we tried to invent the cure. As we split up again, our hostel had finally open and we met more iGEMers as it turned out the whole hostel was almost exclusively booked by other iGEM teams.

In the evening we went to the royal palace a nice Asian restaurant to meet with all our fellow iGEMers that arrived a day earlier. On a side note, I misread the email informing us about the restaurant and genuinely thought that we were invited into THE royal palace in Delft, well we did not meet any royals, but we had a royal feast!

On the next morning the Meetup started, after grabbing our welcome bags and introducing ourselves to a couple of more teams, Fiona, Delfts team leader introduced the schedule and the scientific talks started. I really enjoyed the first talk by Dr. Cees Dekker about nanotechlogy how it is connected to biotechnology and a short iGEM history lesson, at least from Delft. But it certainly inspired me to proceed to promote iGEM at my home university where the competition is still fairly new.

Afterwards we had the opportunity to get to know the film team from Evry who asked me to do an interview for them. After a short coffee break the scientific talks proceeded, sadly I was quite preoccupied with events unfolding at my hometown Hamburg. As we enjoyed our time in Delft more and more footage arrived from Hamburg, depicting Hamburg in flames. What happened? G20 happened. For the next 2 days more and more footage arrived showing protesters clashing violently with the police, which reacted with more and more force. A spiral of violence, so I was thinking about all my friends and family that was still there.

Gladly distraction came quickly! First, we had lunch and then after all the talks ended we proceeded with the poster presentation. And this is where the real awesomeness started, to hear about all the cool projects that young aspiring scientist, like me, had thought about and were putting all their time and effort into were a real blast. Plus, I had to explain our own project repeatedly while we received a lot of valuable feedback.

After all the serious stuff was done it was time for socializing, we had an amazing barbeque and a whole lot of beer and good conversations. To conclude the evening, we went on to explore the Delft nightlife, and what happens in Delft stays in Delft.

iGEM Team – An interdisciplinarity check up! with Mirjam Brassler

The iGEM team consists of students from a huge range of academic disciplines: Biology, Chemistry, Education, Psychology, Nanoscience, Molecular Life Sciences, Communication Studies, and Information technology. In order to achieve a holistic understanding and find solutions to complex issues, interdisciplinarity is highly needed. However, interdisciplinary teamwork exhibits a large potential for conflicts and in practice most collaborations fail. As usual, also the interdisciplinary iGEM team experience difficulties in communication, inappropriate expectations, and underestimation of collaborative work. The interdisciplinary checkup dressed these issues with an introduction into recent findings of research regarding interdisciplinarity, deriving strategies for an effective interdisciplinary teamwork and exercises in interdisciplinary communication and reflection of the interdisciplinary teamwork in iGEM.

To sum up, it is important to repeatedly find common ground in aims, visions and actual teamwork to reach a shared understanding. It is crucial to invest time. One should be aware of additional work that comes with interdisciplinary collaboration. In different professional languages and terminologies, identical words can have various meanings. Consequently, one should adapt professional languages, use colloquial speech and reduce speed. One major requirement of successful interdisciplinary teamwork on SD is self-study to enhance ones’ understanding of the other disciplines’ way of thinking and methods. While working in an interdisciplinary team the share of knowledge is crucial for success. This includes knowledge regarding non-disciplinary insights to sustainability, discipline-based knowledge on sustainability as well as practical skills and experiences. Moreover, having a good relationship is key to prevent conflicts. It is important to take a step back and to reflect the interdisciplinary team process, especially during discussions. Furthermore, one should differentiate between the person and the discipline in conflicts and in the design of tasks and roles. No one likes to be judged by ones affiliation and consequently related stereotypes of disciplines. Finally, one can deploy a professional moderator.

Study Career Day at the SDS am Heidberg school

During our initial lab phase I had the possibility to speak to promising pupils at the SDS am Heidberg, a local high school, about studying life sciences and studying in general. After a brief introduction into what studying means and how it will impact your general life, moving from home, financing your own life, how lectures are designed, how many internships are included. To conclude my talks, I presented some of my favorite parts of university life of course featuring iGEM.

As someone who is involved in many different activities in our university I can safely say that iGEM is one of the if not the most rewarding course you can participate in if you are interested in MINT at our university. Therefore, I recommended iGEM and similar scientific projects to the young adults before me. While I was introducing our current project, many of them asked questions about studying and science in general. I spoke to some teachers as well, however it will take a long time to establish iGEM in German high schools, if that ever happens, the financial burden and distance might still be too steep to make it a viable option for many schools and universities alike.