Europe Teachers Workshop/Team reports

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Contents

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
  • 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