Science is an international community that knows no borders, politics or race. When one embarks on a scientific journey, fellow scientists from around the world are there to offer assistance, guidance and a different point of view, all in the name of scientific innovation. iGEM is no exception, placing great emphasis on the collaborative aspect of every team’s project.
Our first interaction was with the Peshawar team from Pakistan. We were especially excited about speaking to them, due to our respective countries not being in diplomatic relations with one another. We exchanged emails for a while, until we finally scheduled a skype session *picture*.
In the course of the session we discussed our respective projects and needs for the competition. Our new friends helped us gain a new perspective regarding our Wiki design, and offered wisdom about how to tackle this facet of our project.
Next, we reached out to team Bristol. They graciously offered us a tool they had developed for writing Wiki code, which proved to be immensely helpful. Up to that point we encountered setbacks with our wiki design and this collaboration came at an auspicious time. Thanks to this act of professional courtesy, we were able to make significant process on our wiki page.
The jewel in our crown is our collaboration with the Technion, on the esteemed topic of ethics. We sought to profoundly investigate the ethical side of our project, seeing as how it deals with sensitive subjects spanning genetic engineering and the human food industry. One of our main objectives was to create a product that promotes ecological and sustainable food production, the basis for which is clearly ethics. The Technion team compiled an ethics handbook, with the help of..? This succinct manifest spans the world of ethics, covering subjects from ? to ?. We read this text with guidance from Dr. Meshi ? and were inspired to write our own ethical guidelines. The insight we gained by reading their ethical standpoint inspired us to view our research in a different light, emphasizing ethics as a major component of our project.
