Team:Georgia State/Collaborations
Collaborations
Because we get by with a little help from our friends
Mid-Atlantic Meetup
The Mid-Atlantic Meetup was hosted by the University of Maryland on July 13th in College Park, MD. Georgia State University joined five other teams to discuss our projects, present our work and give each other feedback.
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Georgia Meetup
The Georgia Meetup was held at Emory University on September 22nd. We joined Emory University and Lambert High School to talk about the challenges our teams face and successful team management techniques.
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China Sister School
Georgia State University has a Summer study abroad program focusing on biotechnology in partnership with Southwest Jiaotong University (SWJU). This summer a group of students from our sister school came to visit GSU.
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Mid-Atlantic Meetup
In keeping with the collaboratory spirit of iGEM, this year we were fortunate to participate in a mid-Atlantic meetup organized by The University of Maryland. In attendance were William and Mary, University of Virginia, Pittsburgh, Richard and Montgomery, and University of Maryland. Going into the meetup, we were focused on advancing last year’s project of creating a bacterial detection system by making a fusion protein of factor C – a protein in horseshoe crab blood that undergoes an auto catalysis in the presence of gram-negative bacteria – and HCG. We were excited at the potential of collaborating with the teams in attendance, especially as it pertained to possible protein detection systems. You can read more about the meetup on UMaryland's wiki.
Download our presentation here!Georgia Meetup
Rehmat and Christina went to Emory University at the O. Wayne Rollins Research Center to discuss project ideas and future collaborations with other Georgia teams who are participating in iGEM for this year. Each team discussed an overview idea of their project as well as what they have planned up until the Jamboree.
The number of people who attended this event made it possible for us to really connect and foster a more “at home” setting where we could each share some challenges we all faced. We all got to open up a little as we spoke about limitations of our labs and were able to get a full understanding of the inner working of each team’s lab. After attending this event, we all felt that it would be in our best interests to create a permanent platform where we could communicate, exchange ideas, and collaborate.
Emory is having a similar issue that we dealt with last year. Their team consists mostly of seniors who will be graduating. The 2018 GSU iGEM team was also made up of entirely new members, meaning we did not have any team members with iGEM experience, and could not benefit from any mentoring from returning members. We discussed with the Emory team the ideas, concepts and expectations we wished someone had left behind for us so we could cary on better. We both wanted to ditch the idea of the team starting from scratch every year. One can never fully understand all that is iGEM without having done it once before, but there are definitely expectations that can be discussed to help adhere to the mindset needed to do well in iGEM.
China Sister School
It is no secret that iGEM has become increasingly popular in recent years. One of our sister schools, Southwest Jiaotong University, has shown interest in starting an iGEM team, and came to iGEM GSU for advice. Their headmaster, as well as two faculty members and several students came to observe and ask questions about what iGEM is, how we conduct our lab and what our project idea is for this year. One of the faculty members actually lectures here at Georgia State and some of the students participate in an exchange program with GSU, and are here for the fall semester.
Following our presentation, we had a “Q&A” session where students discussed their concerns as well as their own ideas on how to start their own iGEM team. The session concluded with us giving a few pointers on what the best way to go about that would be. We had a presentation that included all this information and shared each of our own experiences.After our presentation, several students expressed a serious interest in iGEM, citing the opportunity for hands on experience that comes with participation.
