Judging in iGEM is an essential component to the iGEM Competition. During the judging process, teams earn medals, prizes, and awards that help to acknowledge and celebrate their months of hard work. Judges are entrusted with evaluating the team projects. Through their work, judges help the iGEM community celebrate the teams’ accomplishments during the Giant Jamboree.

iGEM teams can compete for medals, prizes, and awards based on the work the team has carried out throughout the iGEM season. During the Giant Jamboree, each team’s work is evaluated by a panel of judges and teams are awarded medals, prizes, and/or awards based on that evaluation.

When judges evaluate your team, they will look at your wiki, Registry Pages (if applicable), watch your presentation video, view your poster, and ask you questions during your assigned judging session at the Giant Jamboree. All of this information is used during your evaluation.

Judging Workflow for Teams

There are two major parts of the judging workflow for teams: first, teams need to learn about the medals, prizes, and awards that they can achieve this year, and, second, teams need to document their projects and highlight the work they carried out towards earning those medals, prizes, and awards.

Learning

Together with each of your teammates and instructors, you need to learn about the judging criteria that you will be evaluated on by your panel of judges. This is done by reading through all of the content provided for the Medals, Awards, and Rubric as you begin your iGEM project. By reviewing this material at the start of your project, this ensures that you can ask questions as early as possible. Learning about and understanding this material should be the responsibility of the entire team and not a single person.

Medals
Medals celebrate the accomplishments of all our iGEM teams. Teams only compete with themselves for a medal. The three levels of medals, from lowest to highest are Bronze, Silver, and Gold. You can learn about this on the Medals page.

Awards
In iGEM, awards and prizes are selective and celebrate excellence in a given area. We have three major categories of awards and prizes: (1) Grand Prizes, (2) Track Awards, and (3) Special Prizes, which also includes Community Prizes. You can learn more about this on our Awards page.

Rubric
The judges use a scoring rubric to evaluate your team’s overall projects and any special prizes that you have nominated your team for on the judging form. Scoring rubrics are a common tool used to ensure consistent evaluation is taking place. The questions are posted publicly so both teams and judges can see the rubric questions, which helps

Dev/Judging/Intro

Introduction to Judging

Judging Workflow for Teams

Learning

iGEM Foundation

Contact

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