Team:Tsinghua/Collaborations
Collaborations
CCiC
The 7th CCiC Conference was held in 2020 from August 28th to August 31th. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the offline conference was canceled and transformed to online meeting base on ZOOM. This conference was organized by Shenzhen Synthetic Biology Association and assisted by CPU iGEM team.
CCiC has always been one of the largest synthetic biology event for all the iGEMers in China, efficiently provide opportunities and conveniences for the communication and interaction among the teams. In the 7th CCiC conference, over 70 Chinese iGEM teams shared their idea, project proposal and scientific results via presentation video and poster.
The theme of 7th CCiC, “From Lab to Fab”, was aimed at encouraging the iGEMers to transform the laboratory achievement to the practicable fabrication and to change our lives with synthetic biology. The conference activities included team exhibitions, poster presentations, special lectures and technology salons. It also invited representatives of the synthetic biology industry, scientific research leaders and other young people to pass on advanced biological knowledge and to offer iGEM support. The experience of participating in CCiC and communicating with other teams has broaden our horizon and expanded our social network. Not only had we obtained much knowledge about many other fields on synthetic biology, but also got acquainted with many other teams that focus on biofilm problems, including DUT_China, WHU_China, SUSTech_Shenzhen and UM_Macau, which laying the foundation of our valuable partnership, the establishment of Anti-biofilm Community(ABC).
NCiC
On August 21, Tsinghua, as one of the participating teams, joined Peking, NJMU-China, NJTech_China, NJU-China, CPU_CHINA, SCU-China, XJtu-China and other teams to participate in the Conference of Nanjing iGEMer Community (NCiC) hosted by CPU and GenScript Co., Ltd. for offline discussion. At the same time, professor Liu Yu, the instructor of the gold medal team of the CPU 2019, and many experts of GenScript were also invited to the meeting to provide valuable advice.
A view at the factory gate of the GenScript Co., Ltd.
Photo of all the teams and judges in NCiC
The conference was hosted by GenScript Co., Ltd., one of the world's largest gene-synthesis companies.We first visited the exhibition hall and factory of GenScript Co., Ltd. GenScript Co., Ltd.has cooperation with world-renowned research institutes and universities, and supports the application and promotion of outstanding iGEM team projects every year. The faculties of GenScript Co., Ltd. introduced their business and products to us. Not only do these products provide optimized solutions for the laboratory, but many of them are also being used in other aspects of life. we could feel that synthetic biology, as a new field in industry, is spreading in China and around the world, and has a bright future.
Teams are reading the introduction of GenScript Co., Ltd.and its products
After that, each team took turns to present the design of their team project and their current progress, and discussed with each other in the meeting hall. On-site experts and judges give comments and suggestions for each project. In particular, the teams shared the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on project progress and their response. Tsinghua and Team Peking members also had a fierce debate on the design and application of each other's projects, which also became the climax of the conference.
Team members of Tsinghua are discussing and debating about the projects
Team Tsinghua won the top three prizes in this presentation,, together with NJMU-China, CPU_CHINA and won the prize provided by GenScript Co., Ltd. However, we also realized that some of our design ideas were not all-rounded, such as limited application scope (that time our focus is only in PVC pipe), lacking of the measurement for biofilm degradation, etc. Tsinghua held a team meeting after the Conference, and the feedback from NCiC helped us a lot in the following progress.
iGEM Beijing Regional Meeting
Due to the Covid-19 and the preventive measures in Beijing, the iGEM teams in Beijing became the latest teams to return to college laboratory. Due to the special situation, there is a urgent need for iGEM teams in Beijing to hold a meeting to exchange the experiment progress and the countermeasures for not being able to return to laboratory in time. Thanks to CAU-China, who turned this idea to reality via holding the iGEM Beijing Regional Online Meeting on August 13th . 8 teams presented their projects. 8 teams, including BNU_China, BIT, BUCT, CAU_China, Peking, Tsinghua, Tsinghua-A, USAS-China presented their projects respectively and had a deep talk about the experience during this pandemic.
Although this pandemic did delay our experiment progress, after this meeting a stronger connection between the iGEM teams around Beijing was established. We have been treasuring this friendship which offered us much help and encouragement for the followed team works.
ABC community
Together with WHU-China, UM_Macau, DUT-China, SUSTech_Shenzhen, HK_HCY, (SZU-China), as one of the members, we joined the biofilm prevention community: the Anti-Biofilm Community (ABC) in August. The ABC member teams are dedicated to tackle the problem of biofilm contamination in our lives. Because of this common goal, we have engaged in many cooperations online and offline, from experimental design and modeling to interviews and scientific publicity. More details in Partnership.
Co-education
Due to the COVID-19 epidemic and the popularity of online course, as an alternative to offline teaching, together with Peking, BNU-China, CAU_China and FAFU-CHINA, we launched the popular science course "Synthetic Biology :From the Beginning" for the public. More details in Education.
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