Europe Teachers Workshop/Team reports

KULeuven

 * One student found out about Venter/minimal genome and came across sythetic bio and iGEM
 * Info session - 25 students interested
 * Picked team of ~12 students based on motivation letter not grades from across 4 disciplines
 * 2 molec bio labs
 * Center for biosciences, biotech, bioinformatics is donating money
 * Expect to learn

LCG-UNAM-Mexico

 * Heard about iGEM through Pam Silver
 * Undergrad program in Genomic Science is supporting financially
 * Team of 13 students

Groningen

 * Enthusiastic student whose father was in England and had heard about it, national newspapers, starting a new institute in Synthetic Bio
 * Want to integrate it into teaching courses
 * Advertised in University newspaper for students (and other professors)
 * Team of 12 students - biology, physics, chemistry
 * Meet 2x/week
 * Money from DSM (industry), new Syn Bio institute, University
 * Expect to meet other people and be active in the field

TUMunchen

 * Advisor had heard about it; want to move toward the direction of SynBio
 * Looked for students through student lectures
 * Team of 11 students (biochem, biophysics, bioinformatics)

ESBS-Strasbourg

 * Heard about iGEM through Drew
 * Team of 8 students who approached the school for support
 * Started thinking about projects around January
 * French Embassy is supporting them and the Paris team
 * Use this opportunity to start a course in SynBio (starting in June)
 * School of Physics is also interested
 * Working on cell division control in yeast

EPF-Lausanne

 * 2001 EPFL launched new life sciences which yielded interested faculty
 * Sent out letters and put up posters and recruited life sciences and engineering
 * Info session yielded 30 people, 20 applied via a proposal
 * Each group (4 of 3 people) proposed a project and they voted democratically on which one to proceed with
 * Are currently modeling to see whether project is feasible

UNIPV-Pavia

 * Heard about iGEM from 2006 Bologna team
 * Housed within the biomedical engineering track of the university
 * Team of 6-10 people; have 2 students so far

Heidelberg

 * Heard about iGEM through BioSysBio
 * Recruited via posters/flyers/webpage and received ~30 applications

Newcastle

 * Heard of it through Nature article
 * Wanted to have a team in 07 but couldn't get funding so this year started earlier
 * Bioinformatics (3) and micro bio (2) and comp sci (1)
 * Based in school of computational science
 * BBSRC funding for bioinformatics and Society for Applied Biology funding
 * Meeting 1x/week with seminars and exercises -- interdisciplinary!
 * Looking to setup synbio masters in the future

Valencia

 * Returning team
 * Organized talks/conferences to prepare and also a 2-week course on synbio
 * 10 students, 4 professors - engineering, chem, bio
 * Funding from regional government and anticipate univ and local gov support
 * Considering project on temperature measurement

TUDelft

 * Stumbled on iGEM through another university's website
 * Difficult to find students because of a late start (students had already setup plans)
 * Team of 6 students - 3 life sci, 1 mechanical eng, 1 biomedical, 1 bioinformatician
 * Sensors and switches are popular prospects
 * Dept of biotech., Faculty of applied science, and Dept of nanotech are providing funding; Nanobioscience department might be started also housing synbio

Warsaw

 * Students learned about iGEM through some exchange program with Cambridge University
 * University funding, Polish Foundation of Science (money comes in parts, contingent on success!)
 * Expecting to win (means we expect to succeed in our project so we can go to the Jamboree :)
 * 9 students - biotech, bio, chem

Paris

 * Returning team; originally started with synbio club
 * Club continues to meet throughout the year and decided to focus on teaching foundational aspects as a way to have topics for the club
 * Students on team/club spending time in lab with high school students
 * Funding is difficult because of not being tied with a specific university; obtained help from Embassy, Every Computational team, Betancourt Foundation
 * Focusing on obtaining money for several years instead of searching for funding every year
 * Starting an interdisciplinary masters program to get credit