Diversity and Inclusion

We are a group of passionate students who want to use synthetic biology to solve pressing societal issues. Our team consists of students from seven different academic fields, ranging from philosophy to nanoscience, and with six different nationalities. The team is internally divided in different subgroups that specialize in different aspects of the project, such as dry and wet lab, human practices, funding and entrepreneurship, and outreach. This allows us to go further on each topic, as it allows each team member to devote most of their time to a specific team, while at the same time managing to participate in other subgroups. This allows in-depth work on a multitude of areas, while simultaneously keeping everyone in the loop. Furthermore, we are all part of the lab team. We find such an approach to be necessary in order to avoid that just a few members hold all the expertise of the project backbone.

The most important aspect of our team navigation is our flat hierarchical structure. We all have an equal vote, and all our decisions have been made collectively throughout our project. Our group is particularly focused on teamwork. We believe that a really functional and efficient team has to work like an organism, where different organs/groups are independent but at the same time connected, prepared to give up energy upon other organs/groups, in order to keep the organism/project alive. For making this possible, there must be a close relation between all the members, and should be reached within a really short time frame to be efficiently implemented from the start.

We have been working on team building from the beginning of the competition, thanks to one of our supervisors (Nanna Heinz), which has worked hard to build an environment of trust and connection within the team. We made part of our daily routine a collective check in and check out, where we share our feelings and expectations; we made different workshops to learn about the possible dysfunctions of a team and how to solve them; we spend some days trying to find our motivations and goals within, but also outside of iGEM and how to stay true with them.