Team:Paris/Team

Where and when iGEM08 Paris took place ?

The [http://www.cri-paris.org/fr/cri/ Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity] (CRI) is a structure hosted in the medicine faculty of the university [http://www.univ-paris5.fr/ Paris Descartes] located at the Cochin-Port Royal site. It proposes to students and researchers from different backgrounds to create multidisciplinary projects. Synthetic biology is a promising subject for the development of such projects as it tries to put into practice the concepts of engineering into biology.

The CRI is a structure in the heart of which students animate scientific clubs, where they meet to read scientific articles, share ideas and receive guests. The [http://biosynthetique.free.fr/index.php5?title=Accueil club SYNBIOSYS] for Synthetic and Systems Biology was created in November 2006. This initiative was truly a hit, and, quite understandably, the students heard about iGEM and decided to participate in [http://parts.mit.edu/igem07/index.php/Paris2007], supported by several teachers and scientists.

Thanks to its original project of Multicellular Synthetic Bacteria, able to optimize the production of a useful substance for men, the Parisian iGEM team managed to reach the Finale where the students won a Gold Medal as well as the prestigious Grand Prize for Foundational Research. Quite understandably, the SYNBIOSYS club created another iGEM team for the 2008 edition.

Who are we ?

Our team is supervised by four Instructors who have diametrically opposite backgrounds, chemistry, biology, physics and computational biology. Thomas, the team leader participated to the iGEM competition last year, his experience is extremely useful for us. Besides, six Advisors help us when we have a problem. We are fourteen Students participating this year to the iGEM competition. We are coming from different universities and "Grandes Ecoles". Five of us are working in the dry lab, we are nine in the wet lab and Romain, thanks to his background in engineering in life sciences is at the interface. Exclusively, this year, our team is hosting one high school students participating to the [http://scienceacademie.org/ Science Academie] program: Guillaume.