Team:Warwick/Collaborations

Collaborations

Throughout the project we were engaging with other iGEM teams though interactive activities on social media, meet-ups and collaboration projects. Those activities really made us involved into the supportive and collaborative environment of the iGEM community. Through our mentorships and collaboration reports, we got to know team members from all around the world, which became a great cultural exchange experience. We want to thank all of the teams mentioned here for their time, effort and support.

UK iGEM Teams meetup

In June 2020 we were kindly invited by the iGEM St. Andrews's team to join the UK Nationwide Meet-up. At the time the meet-up was taking place our project was still fresh, so it was extremely useful and inspiring to see the progress of other teams and their plans for the future. The meet-up has also given us more insight into what collaborations would be possible with the UK iGEM teams in the future. For instance, we learnt that iGEM Edinburgh was also working on a biosensor model, which brought us together for a collaboration on a ‘Biosensor Manual’ further down the timeline.

Presenting our project at the UK iGEM meetup

Diagnostics Track Team Meetup

In collaboration with iGEM Moscow, iGEM Leiden, iGEM Patras & University of Warwick Biology Society

In the spirit of mutual learning we organized a global meet-up for the iGEM Diagnostics Track teams to support each other on the finish line, share our iGEM experiences and present the results of our projects.

We wanted the project presentation part of the meet-up to be educational and accessible to the wider audience, so we collaborated with Warwick BioSoc to create a seminar style event with the project presentations from iGEM teams and Q&As as part of the meet-up. This way, the iGEM teams from Moscow, Leiden and Patras were able to impact our community by making synthetic biology more widely known amongst students, as well as by spreading awareness about the issues that each team were addressing as part of their projects while being miles away from us.

Due to restrictions, the meeting had to be held through Discord!

The poster used to advertise the Diagnostics Track Meetup.

Mentoring and feedback session

In collaboration with iGEM Peru

iGEM UPCH Peru team has become our great support throughout the whole project. During our mentoring and feedback session, the team co-leader, Maria, shared some great tips with us based on their experience of hosting their own successful educational events. She suggested that we can make our Lessons in the Box initiative more interactive by including examples from the movies and more organised by having specific team members to be in charge of communications. All of the points were taken into consideration and implemented into our lesson plans. In our turn, we helped with some organisational points and shared our experience from the previous years, as iGEM UPCH Peru is the first undergraduate team in the country, and we also discussed video presentation ideas.

Collaborative Biosensor Manual

In collaboration with iGEM Edinburgh

iGEM Edinburgh kindly reached out to us to collaborate on creation of a biosensor manual that would be available for the future iGEM teams. After multiple interviews and consultations with the business specialists working in the biosensor field for our Human Practices research, we decided to contribute to the collaboration report by including a concise, step-by-step guide to constructing a business plan.

Part of our contribution to the biosensor manual - a small guide to constructing a business plan.

SDG Report with iGEM Peru

We were also glad to be collaborating with iGEM UPCH Peru on their Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) report, where we shared our project goals and outlined which SDG goals are we aiming to achieve in order to spread awareness about the importance of scientific approaches to achieve sustainable development.

Social Media Outreach

Our social media, especially the Instagram page counting 500+subscribers, have become our main communication platform. It helped us to get to know each other and stay in touch, look for collaborations and see the updates from the fellow teams, participate in challenges and share memes. To engage with our audience, we made an iGEM Bingo card to share with the iGEM teams across the world!