iGEM UK meetup at the University of Warwick
We organised an UK iGEM Meetup, bringing together iGEM teams from across the UK at the University of Warwick to exchange ideas and inspire one another through our projects.
The event featured talks on key topics, including:
- Reproducibility in Synthetic Biology Projects by Dr Eszter Csibra
- Effective Poster and Presentation Techniques by Dr Robert Spooner and Tudor Onose
- Ethics of Genetic Engineering by Dr Fabrizio Alberti and Dr Ying-Qi Liaw
The objective of these sessions was to equip UK iGEM teams with the tools to prioritise reproducibility in their research, build confidence in presenting their work both at the meetup and the iGEM Jamboree, and thoughtfully address the ethical considerations of their projects, especially when engaging with the general public on the topic of genetic engineering.
Reflection:
Engaging discussions on the ethics of genetic engineering took place during the anonymous Q&A session with the ethics panel, prompting our team and others to thoughtfully reflect on how to address ethical concerns surrounding genetic engineering in our projects.
Additionally, the presentation workshop equipped both our team and the other participating teams with valuable knowledge and skills to effectively present our projects at the iGEM UK meetup in Sheffield, held later in September. We collaborated with team Phosphix from Sheffield to ensure that their iGEM UK meetup builds up on our meetup. For example, at our meetup we did poster presentations and a workshop on presenting a PowerPoint presentation; and at the Sheffield UK iGEM meetup, we presented our project with slides.
The meetup also kickstarted collaborations between teams and we decided to collaborate with other teams to make educational YouTube videos for future iGEM teams.
iGEM101 Collaboration
We were brainstorming ideas in the lab and thought to film videos of our routine lab protocols and make them public to assist future iGEM teams. The idea to collaborate with other teams came about during conversations we had with the Oxford team at the UK iGEM meetup at the University of Warwick. We asked other UK iGEM teams on the UK iGEM WhatsApp groupchat to collaborate with us to film videos for our iGEM101 YouTube channel. Team Magenta from the University of Cambridge and Team OneRing from the University of Oxford kindly collaborated with us.
Collaborating with other teams proved invaluable, as they introduced us to techniques different from our own, enriching our understanding of lab protocols and benefiting future iGEM teams as well.
Wiki Accessibility Collaboration
During the Sheffield UK iGEM meetup, a member of Team Phosphix from Sheffield encouraged us to make our wiki more accessible. We carefully considered this recommendation and took steps to improve the accessibility of our wiki accordingly.
SynBioUK collaboration for the UK iGEM meetup
We had the opportunity to collaborate with SynBioUK in organising our UK iGEM meetup. During our discussions, we outlined the objectives of the event and invited SynBioUK to deliver a presentation. Their talk not only paved the way for future collaborations but also inspired the development of our educational card activity on bacteria.