Describe how and why you chose your iGEM project.
Team Oneonta was inspired by the recent surge of investment in advanced manufacturing in New York following the CHIPS and Science Act. This is an exciting economic opportunity but could have a significant negative impact on our natural resources, particularly our clean water. After speaking with experts at Global Foundries and the College of Nanotechnology Science and Engineering, our team chose to focus on challenges pertaining to waste management in the semiconductor manufacturing sector. Our goal is to improve the sustainability of wastewater reprocessing using pH-sensitive riboswitches to drive the expression of genes to control pH and detect/remove contaminants from semiconductor manufacturing waste streams. This aligns with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal #6, “Ensure the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all,” and Goal #9, "Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization, and foster innovation." We are also investigating methods of turning waste products into valuable commodities via biotransformation (e.g., extracting copper from solid waste into a commercially valuable form) and exploring our project's ethical and regulatory landscape.
Please see the 2024 Medals Page for more information.
We encourage you to put up a lot of information and content on your wiki, but we also encourage you to include summaries as much as possible. If you think of the sections in your project description as the sections in a publication, you should try to be concise, accurate, and unambiguous in your achievements. Your Project Description should include more information than your project abstract.
iGEM teams are encouraged to record references you use during the course of your research. They should be posted somewhere on your wiki so that judges and other visitors can see how you thought about your project and what works inspired you.