Team:UCLouvain/Collaborations
Our collaborations
Collaborations in the iGEM competition are important for us as well for other teams because it’s a source of mutual help. We don’t consider other teams as competitors but mostly as a source of inspiration. We hope to have helped some teams too. In this competition, mutual help is essential for present a project as successful as possible in Boston. Networking, sharing and communication are the keys in research and did our best to keep them at the centre of our working philosophy!
During our meet up at the European Parliament we gave the opportunity to other iGEM teams to present their project in 3 mins in front of the public and the panel of experts! It was a unique opportunity in an incredible venue! Since we were the only Belgian team we really wanted to valorize our work and share it with other teams from across Europe! More info about the conference.
We were happy to host 3 teams: Lund (Sweden), Paris-Pasteur (France), TU-Eindhoven (Netherlands).
iGEM 2018 Lund (Sweden)
iGEM Lund presenting their project in a 3 mins pitch
iGEM 2018 Paris-Pasteur (France)
iGEM Paris-Pasteur presenting their project in a 3 mins pitch
iGEM 2018 TU-Eindhoven (Netherlands)
iGEM TU-Eindhoven presenting their project in a 3 mins pitch
It was an excellent rehearsal for the Giant Jamboree and a great opportunity of networking! We were happy to meet our friends and we wish them good luck for the final journey towards Boston! Inspiration.
This year, we collaborated with the Uppsala Igem team. It’s a Swedish team very professional. Since 2009, Uppsala University participates in Igem competition every year. However, this is the third time our University has participated in this competition. Currently, this Swedish team know all the workings of the competition. That's why we asked them for advice.
Uppsala Igem team have a project called “WormBusters” related to the problem of nematode parasites in the horse in an agricultural setting. They want to develop a detection kit that can be used easily by farmers. If you want to know more about their project : https://2018.igem.org/Team:Uppsala
This summer, Nina (from UCLouvain team) left for a week in Sweden to meet them and talk about a potential collaboration between our two teams. Our two teams had the opportunity to present their projects to each other.
Firstly, we exchanged our impressions about both projects (BactWars and WormBusters). What helped us most was to learn more about the internal organization of their team. This summer, we had some problems with our results of the InterLab too and the Uppsala team gave us advice regarding the Interlab. It’s mainly thanks to them that we were able to obtain valid results for the InterLab part.
To thank them for their help, we shared on the social networks their french form about their problematic. Indeed, one of the official languages in Belgium is French. And it allows them to check if their problematic affects only their country or if their project could help farmers from other countries.
Nina (on the left) and the leaders of the Uppsala Igem team in their local Igem in Sweden.
We wanted to work with overseas teams for our European Conference. It was important for us to not only work with European teams. So propose to other worldwide teams to organize a rediffusion of our event. In this perspective we got in touch the University of Laval. As they were very enthusiastic we planned together the logistic details and talk about some content details. They book a room and invited over 20 students to watch and interact during our event.
In early March Celestin went to Paris to meet two iGEM teams in order to share our mutual experience on all the aspect of the contest. He first met met with Arthur Radoux and his colleague Julie Miesch from the Paris Saclay iGEM
team. We able to share our concern about different aspect of the contest such as the modeling part, etc. It was great to have this opportunity to help each other before the rush time. That allowed both of us to take a step back and
set up a good approach from the beginning of the adventure!
We had the opportunity to meet with Santino Nanini. Santino made Celestin a visit of their workspace and building. As you can see they are located in a central area, with a stunning view of Paris. We exchanged ideas on the brainstorming approach. We both knew that we wanted to solve a antimicrobial resistance problem so we shared our visions. It was a great science talk that helped both of our team to take take a step back and share point of view. But beside the science talk we also shared our management approach, about how to efficiently manage the lab work, and everything else. Since we are teams over 10 people that is a crucial part of the work. After our first meeting in Paris, we kept in touch regularly to exchange our point of view and help each other on specific problems.
