On July 26th the iGEM team met with this years PLUS-S (Preparing for Life as an Undergraduate Student - Science) students for a fun science-related activity: making homemade ice cream using liquid nitrogen. This activity enabled the team to converse with the incoming freshmen before the school year started, answer their questions about college life, and introduce them to iGEM. Many of these students had no background in SynBio and had never heard of the field before. Our team was delighted to explain to the PLUS-S students what iGEM and SynBio were, and what the team was working on in the lab. The students were clearly interested in the team, and we strongly encouraged them to join in the spring.

All in all the afternoon was a great recruitment activity for iGEM. The sustainability of the team depends on bright, incoming students, and this year’s team made sure to generate interest for next ensuring we have a strong 2019-2020 program.