Through our project this year, we had many wonderful opportunities to work with other iGEM teams. These teams included UW Seattle, Oxford, East Chapel Hill High School, Gaston Day School, and many more. One of our major collaborations was with Gaston Day School where we helped give guidance to a high school team. In other collaborations, we made a YouTube Channel where other teams were guest speakers. While all of these were important we also wanted to make sure that we gave back the iGEM community at large; so we created a Reddit Page where all iGEMers can discuss ideas with each other and specifically talk about ideas that can be deemed controversial or taboo by the general public. Click on each of the links to learn more about each of our different Collaboration Projects!

Gaston Day School

For the second year in a row our iGEM team has worked with the Gaston Day School. This year, we continued our mentorship role that we began last year and attempted to help the high school team with troubleshooting protocols, providing fresh lines of cells, and thinking about how to test their project. Click the link above to see pictures and learn more about the specifics of this collaboration.

Mini Convention

In August, our team joined East Chapel Hill High School and Gaston Day School at the Southeastern Mini iGEM Convention! There we worked on a collaboration project but we also got to know many of the members from each of the schools. One of our members also spoke at the Convention about synthetic biology ethics. Click the link above for pictures and to learn more about our time at the convention.

Reddit Forum

As members of iGEM, we are taking our first steps towards becoming participants in this field of science. It's important we create a discourse within our community aimed at making us all more self-aware and conscientious towards the societal impacts of our work so that the power of bioengineering is in responsible hands. Also, everyone needs a good meme now and then to get through a long day of lab work! In order to meet these needs, Duke iGEM started r/iGEM_Exchange as a place to share ideas and to discuss critical issues related to our field. Click the link above for snapshots and more information on this project.

Mosquito Curriculum

During the Southeastern Mini iGEM Convention, Duke, Gaston Day School, and East Chapel Hill High School worked together to rewrite material from Building with Bio. All of our teams liked the idea from last year but wanted to update it. So we, with help from our friends, updated the Mosquito Forum Curriculum to reflect Zika issues instead of Malaria. Click the link above to learn more about this collaboration and see how we put this curriculum into action at Duke!

YouTube Channel

This year, we built a YouTube channel. This channel's main goal is to educate the iGEM community about different techniques but also to show newcomers to our community what it is like to be a young researchers. With help from schools like Oxford, UW Seattle, Gaston Day, and East Chapel Hill High School we had many guest stars on our channel to help us teach different protocols as well as to share their perspective on iGEM and synthetic biology. Click the link above for more information on our channel. And don't forget to subscribe!