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 share some challenges we all faced. We each 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. Although some of our discussions came from as well as successful techniques that were related to managing an iGEM team/conducting our labs. After attending this event, we all felt that it would be in all of our best interests to create a more permanent platform where we could all communicate, exchange ideas and do collaborations together, this would allow us to take part in larger efforts considering it would be a combined effort. Spoke about limitations of our labs and truly got to understand the inner workings of each of our labs. Talk more about how we have limited people, everyone has to do everything, no committees Keeping iGEM going is just a matter of setting an example/model and being able to train the new members to see iGEM for all that it is. Emory is having a similar issue that we dealt with last year. Their team consists mostly of seniors who will be graduating and will no longer be part of the iGEM team at Emory and they were having trouble finding a transition where the iGEM team at Emory will not end with their graduation, they want to keep it going. Whereas on our end at Georgia State, we were the recipients of this issue. The 2017 team had left, and the new team consisted of completely new members who had no idea what iGEM was, had no research experience, we simply had interest. We had to learn a lot of things via trial and error and had to learn to take things as they came without any expectations of what is to come. We discussed with them the ideas, concepts, and expectations we wished someone had left behind for us so we could carry 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.