Team:SDU-Denmark/Collaborations
Collaborations
Workshop weekend for Danish iGEM teams
This year’s iGEM competition is different from previous years. In times of a pandemic, one learns to appreciate social contacts. Despite the social restrictions caused by COVID-19, it possible to bring together the Danish iGEM teams for a workshop weekend during summertime. We were visited by the wonderful iGEM teams from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and the University of Copenhagen (KU).
The first day of the weekend began with project presentations and some get-to-know-each-other activities. The different focus areas and applications of synthetic biology launched interesting discussions about our approaches and intentions. It was a great way to get an external view of our project.
We also wanted the weekend to be inspirational for further iGEM work and different workshop sessions were therefore planned, which could be applied for all our three projects. We decided that scientific work, Wiki, and presentation skills should be the focus of the workshops, as they could apply to all teams.
The first workshop was held by Joel Mario Vej-Nielsen, who is a Ph.D. student and supervisor for the SDU-Denmark 2020 team. The focus of this workshop was on how to do good scientific practice. This taught the teams important aspects to consider both for our iGEM projects and future research work. The second workshop was held by Felix Boel Pedersen, who is a Ph.D. student and previous iGEM participant. His workshop was centered around the wiki deliverable and included meaningful tips and ideas regarding content, design, and overall expression of the wiki page. Lastly, the third workshop was hosted by Chrisitan Eiming, who is an expert in the field of public speaking. Christian provided us with great tools for structuring our presentations and how to keep the audience captured.
Nordic meetup
On the 19th of September 2020, our team participated in the Virtual Nordic Conference hosted by the iGEM teams from Linköping and Stockholm. This conference afforded us the possibility of presenting our project and getting feedback from fellow iGEM team and professionals, along with the chance to get to know the other iGEM participants. We found the conference inspiring and were reminded once again of the great applicability of synthetic biology when hearing about the projects that other teams were working on.
Humans of iGEM
Humans of iGEM is dedicated to connecting people, to sharing stories, and building bonds. Two of our team members partook in an interview with “Humans of iGEM”. This interview provided us the opportunity to meet people from other teams and countries. For us, it was surprising to hear that the challenges our team faced were shared by the other teams. The biggest contrast between our teams was, that our team eventually gained access to the university which allowed us to meet and work together in real life, while other teams had not met each other in person for over 7 months. Moreover, it was very interesting to see how the teams, who did not get the chance to do lab work or gain access to their university, made the best out of the situation by reorienting themselves and putting full focus on human practices instead. The exchange between different teams and projects is a main element of iGEM and through the collaboration with Humans of iGEM we were able to experience this in a way.
iJET — paper plane around the world
When we heard about the the iJET initiative by the iGEM Aachen 2020 team in cooperation with the iGEM Darmstadt 2020 team, it was clear that we wanted to be a part of it. For our team, it was a lot of fun to ideate the scene and film the small clip. We specifically chose to film in front of the statue of Hans Christian Anderden, as it is one of the trademarks of Odense. We were pleased to be able to enter the collaboration, as we feel that it was a symbolic way for the iGEM teams of 2020 to connect and stand in solidarity, even from a distance.
Helped the University of Copenhagen team order their genes from IDT
When the iGEM team from the University of Copenhagen were ready to order the parts for their project from IDT, they experienced some trouble prompted by the pandemic that made them unable to gain access to their account. They reached out to us for help, and although we could not give them any advice on how to order their sequences, we were happy to grant them access to our IDT account, and gave them 3.500 bp of our 20.000 bp sponsored by IDT.
Friendly rivalry with the Nottingham iGEM team and podcast participation
Our team and the iGEM team of Nottingham first connected through social media, where we kept in touch and up to date on each other's progress. However, we wanted to create some useful contributions out of the formed relationship between our teams and were very pleased when the team of Nottingham invited us to be featured on their podcast. Here, we discussed struggles, limitations, and the overall importance of our project and synthetic biology. We hope that the podcast has been able to spread prostate cancer awareness and emphasize the importance of early detection. Collaborations like these are important for both the public and other iGEM teams, as it allows us to gain insight and learn from the experiences of other teams.
