Introduction
Collaborations are an integral part of iGEM - because it's fun to work with others and there's a lot more that we can achieve together. Our many successful collaborations with iGEM Teams and other organizations have been listed here. These amazing collaborations brought to life a regional meet-up, a national level biology cum SDG summit, an iGEM proceedings journal and even our wiki! You can refer this page to know about our collaborations this year.
All India iGEM Meet
We co-hosted All India iGEM Meetup 2020 in collaboration with IISER Bhopal, IISER Berhampur, IISER Tirupati, BITS Goa and IIT Roorkee, which was sponsored by Promega. Two fun-filled days - 31st July and 1st August 2020 featured fifteen potential teams from India apart from the hosting teams registered for this competition (Not all of these teams were able to participate in iGEM 2020). The event had a series of talks by scientists from multiple fields, project presentations by participating teams, ‘Fireside chat' sessions with iGEM alumnis and a lot more. Our team had a lot of fun collaborating and coordinating with five other competing iGEM teams who helped successfully conduct this massive event with resounding success.
Figure 1: AIIM Banner
Figure 2: Team Logos
iGEM India BIOSUMMIT 2020
In collaboration with The Dais India, EMERGE, BITSMUN Goa, and iGEM BITS Goa, we organized the first-ever national-level iGEM India BIOSUMMIT 2020 on 25th July 2020. The BIOSUMMIT focused on an interdisciplinary interaction for synthetic biology and its relevance cum impact value in the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. Our aim was to lead a healthy discussion revolving around these goals which were discussed in brief in four committees namely - Ethics of Terraforming, Medical Data Privacy, Prevention of Biowarfare, and Genetic Cosmetic Treatments.
The BIOSUMMIT boasted international judges from the USA to Japan - including iGEM UN CBD 2018 delegates - Aiswarya Prasad and Janina Lüders and iGEM 2020 ambassadors - Varsha Jaisimha and Kaavya Ashok. We also had Georgios Kostakos as our chief guest, who served as the secretariat of the UN Secretary General's High-level panel on Global sustainability. We also saw substantial outstation participation. Each committee had a fruitful discussion about their respective agendas and the judges and moderators gave interesting insights and ensured the smooth flow of events. Each participant contributed to the discussion by adding on to each other's information, identifying problems, and providing solutions in a healthy collaborative manner which led to interesting conclusions from each committee.
Figure 3: Biosummit Banner
iGEM Proceedings Journal
We participated in the journal initiative by iGEM MSP-Maastricht and published three research articles (which includes two in the printed version of the same). The journal functioned exactly like a regular scientific journal, including peer review. This was a great opportunity for our team to train our academic writing and actually publish our work! All articles were peer-reviewed by other teams that participated. Therefore, we not only got the chance to be the authors of peer-reviewed articles, but lived the experience of being a peer reviewer as well.
Figure 4: iGEM Proceedings Journal Initiative
Research Society of Manipal
On the 20th of September, in collaboration with the Research Society of Manipal - we invited Harish Narasimhan, a Masters Graduate from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, currently pursuing his PhD in Immunology from Mayo Clinic Graduate School to share his experience working on convalescent plasma therapy of COVID-19. He also helped curb the spread of misinformation and debunked myths about the novel coronavirus and guided students for their careers in the field of biological sciences.
Figure 5: Alumni Webinar Session
TEDx MAHE Countdown
The independently organized Climate Change conference - TEDx MAHE Countdown invited proposals for live projects to reduce the carbon footprint of the Manipal campus. Our proposal was selected amongst few to be presented on the live edition of TEDx MAHE Countdown event which was hosted virtually on the 25th of October. We got the chance to witness stalwarts for the cause and to present our project to a large audience - creating awareness about how climate change is pushing up the levels of mercury in the fishes and mercury poisoning in general.
Figure 6: TEDx MAHE Countdown Collaboration
Wiki Starter Pack
iGEM BITS Goa developed three amazing tools to make the process of making the wiki so much easier for the upcoming teams. Our wiki utilizes their starter pack and we wish to thank them for this brilliant tool that made it possible for us to build this wiki. A special shoutout to Pranav Ballaney from the iGEM BITS Goa team for helping us out throughout the process of making this wiki.
Figure 7: Wiki Starter Pack