Team:KCL UK/Biologix Competition

Biologix Competition

Increasing access to SynBio: Hosting our own competition

Introduction & Rationale:

Biologix is a free biotechnology and synthetic biology entrepreneurial and innovation competition. It is an accessible opportunity for all students in their penultimate year of high school to take part in a skill-enhancing project. During this competition all the essential skills of project development will be acquired, which will help enhance students’ CV and Personal Statement by teaching them a wide variety of skills.

Competition Design:

The competition is intended to introduce students to synthetic biology and foster their passion for the field, hence encouraging them to start an iGEM team or become a member of an iGEM team at their future university. Biologix aims to stimulate students to create a solution to a world problem of their choice, using biotechnology and synthetic biology. The teams are composed of six members each, and the primary task will be to research and argue a solution, for the chosen problem, through literature review. Once the research is completed, students will be required to complete a lean business plan and a section explaining the skills they have learnt in the Biologix competition. The project must then be presented in two parts; a report explaining how the final goal has been reached and the defence for the solution of the chosen problem; followed by a presentation that will be done through video-call. Finally, after each group has submitted their project, they will receive another team’s project and will be asked to peer assess it. The marking scheme has been provided in the handbook below; teams will be attributed with bronze, silver and gold medals depending on the quality of their work. Furthermore, special awards for the best presentation, best report and entrepreneur will be assigned to projects that will show outstanding qualities in these sections.

Competition Timeline:

The schools will receive the teacher and student pack in October, and the projects will have to be submitted in February. A more detailed timeline is supplied in the chart below.

Figure 1: Timeline of the Biologix Competition.

Competition Documents:

A PDF handbook has been created to help the teams participating in the competition, containing all the necessary instruction to realise an outstanding project. Furthermore, the competition is also provided of a website, a useful tool for finding further information and getting in contact with the committee.

Competion's pdf handbook

Future Plans:

Looking forward with the Biologix competition, we aim to create a starting point for other teams or external parties from which they can build on. We will work with other teams by using the Biologix website as the main form of communication. We plan on collaborating with teams in creating additional educational content for students, as well as providing the possibility to offer the experience of the competition in their home country/location. Furthermore, by supplementing competition documents, including those stated above, we assure to provide open resources in order for teams to have a clear outline on how to run the competition. Lastly, we hope to develop a sponsorship with various affiliated communities, in primis STEM UK, in order to assure the competition a broader audience, as well as a fantastic opportunity for students to start creating a network for themselves in the STEM community.