Team:Groningen/ViBM

Virtual iGEM Benelux Meetup

The iGEM competition is a long adventure that requires you to work together as a team. Another important aspect of the iGEM competition is to discuss your project with others; to get input that will help to improve your own work. To help other teams in this regard, we decided to host a virtual meetup with a focus on teams from the Benelux. The goal, while organizing this event, was to plan events in the meetup that will help improve the projects of the different teams. Therefore, before the meetup, we communicated with the different teams from the Benelux to explore in which aspect they needed guidance and what they would like to see. Additionally, we planned the meetup in the middle of the iGEM timeline, giving the teams enough time to take the input from others and improve their project accordingly.

The virtual iGEM Benelux Meetup was a 4-day event with team presentations, webinars hosted by experts, and social activities. The meetup was a great success with teams joining not only from the Benelux region but all over the world! Go to the gallery to see some of photos made during the meetup.

Overview schedule

Wednesday

22nd of July

15:00 - 16:00 h:  Team Presentations iGEM UGhent    iGEM Groningen

16:00 - 17:00 h:   Webinar Bacteriophages iGEM Delft

17:00 - 18:00 h:   Pop quiz iGEM Maastricht

Learn more about the schedule of this day!

Thursday

23rd of July

15:00 - 16:00 h:  Team Presentations iGEM Maastricht    iGEM Amsterdam

16:00 - 17:00 h:   Webinar Wiki Design Dimitrios Michailidis (VRT committee)

17:00 - 18:00 h:   Wiki Hunt iGEM Groningen

Learn more about the schedule of this day!

Friday

24th of July

15:00 - 16:00 h:  Team Presentations iGEM Leiden    iGEM Delft

16:00 - 17:00 h:   Webinar Linear Modeling iGEM Amsterdam

17:00 - 18:00 h:   Google Maps Hunt iGEM Leiden

Learn more about the schedule of this day!

Saturday

25th of July

15:00 - 16:00 h:  Human Practices Q&A Zoë Robaey (HP committee)

16:00 - 18:00 h:   Safe by Design RIVM   iGEM Rotterdam

Learn more about the schedule of this day!

Jury panel to help improve the projects

Not only did we want to provide a platform for the teams to present their project to other iGEMers and receive feedback from them, but we wanted to go a step further by creating an expert judging panel. This judging panel consisted of previous iGEM jury members, previous iGEM participants, and current iGEM committee members. They provided written feedback to the teams after the presentations with pointers on how they think the projects could be improved upon in the upcoming months.

JC Gray

Human Practices committee

Currently active in medical device development

Dimitrios Michailidis

VRT committee

Team member iGEM Dundee 2014

Supervisor iGEM Sheffield 2016-2019

iGEM judging experience

Instructor iGEM Cyprus 2020

Sonja Billerbeck

Measurement committee

Team member iGEM ETH Zurich 2010

Previous mentor iGEM ETH Zurich & Columbia University

iGEM judging experience

Instructor iGEM Groningen

René Inckemann

Measurement committee

Team member iGEM Duesseldorf 2016-2017

Mentorship program iGEM Kaiserslautern 2019

iGEM judging experience

Instructor iGEM Marburg 2018-2020

Svenja Vinke

Safety committee

Team member iGEM Bielefield-CeBiTec 2017

iGEM judging experience

Instructor iGEM Bielefield-CeBiTec 2018-2020

iGEM Benelux Trophy

Creating a tradition

Inspired by the Nordic iGEM Meetup, and to congratulate the team with the best project at the time, we introduced the iGEM Benelux Trophy. Based on the feedback that all the participants gave to the team presentations, we were able to decide which team had the most complete project at the time (that is, the team that took all the aspects of iGEM the best into consideration; Human Practices, Wet Lab, Dry lab, Outreach, etc). In addition, the trophy is meant to be used as a tradition. At the base of the trophy, there is a lot of space available to put up the names of winners from a similar competition in the future. We hope to pass this trophy on to many other teams in the future of iGEM. Go to the Contributions page to discover how the trophy was created!

Gallery

×

Wednesday

22nd of July

---

Webinar Bacteriophages     iGEM Delft

TU Delft’s iGEM team Phocus hosted a webinar on the uses of bacteriophages. Ranging from specificity to easy administration, phages offer several advantages as a biological tool and the engineering thereof may lead to additional benefits. Phocus gave a sneak peek of the uses of phages and topped off the webinar with a discussion together with a professor leading the field: Dr. Stan Brouns.

Pop Quiz     iGEM Maastricht

iGEM Maastricht created an awesome pop-quiz about SynBio and iGEM. The winner of the quiz (iGEM Delft) went home with a trophy and a place in the iGEM proceedings Journal 2020 created by iGEM Maastricht.

×

Thursday

23rd of July

---

Webinar Wiki Design     Dimitrios Michailidis

Dimitrios Michailidis, of the VRT committee, took us through the design of our project’s wiki and all the considerations that come along with this. This session motivated the teams to already start thinking about how the final product of their project would look like and what the best way would be to design their wiki.

Click here to rewatch the webinar!

Wiki Hunt     iGEM Groningen

iGEM Groningen organized the Wiki Hunt game. An online puzzle that challenges you to navigate through the world of Wikipedia. Together with randomly chosen team members, different teams had to figure out the fastest way to go from one Wikipedia page to another using only the hyperlinks on the pages.

×

Friday

24th of July

---

Webinar Linear Modeling     iGEM Amsterdam

iGEM Amsterdam organized a webinar on linear modeling. Linear modeling is a flexible mathematical method which can be used to find a strategy which reduces the costs of a product, to adjust metabolic networks or to analyze the influence of a certain gene knockout. They explained how linear modeling could improve the projects of the different teams.

Google Maps Hunt     iGEM Leiden

Since we were unable to visit each other in real life, Rapidemic, the iGEM team from the University of Leiden, created a Google Maps hunt. By looking for trails in the online world of Google Maps, the game enabled us to still explore each other's cities!

×

Saturday

25th of July

---

Human Practices Q&A     Zoë Robaey

In this interactive session, Zoë helped the different teams to improve their human practices approach. Prior to the meetup, we gathered information about the projects of the different teams, and based on this information, Zoë gave direct tips and feedback.

Click here to rewatch the webinar!

Safe-by-Design game     iGEM Rotterdam    RIVM  

The Safe-by-Design serious game was developed and organized by the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and Environment (RIVM) together with iGEM Rotterdam. This game stimulated our attention for both technical risk assessment and management and a broad perspective on societal impact and safe innovation, in an early phase of our iGEM project. Moreover, the game provided us with a route to address human practices into our innovation process with a focus on safety concerns.

---