Europe Teachers Workshop/Team reports
From 2008.igem.org
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