For the sixth time we had the honor of hosting the annual DTU Biobrick Tutorial. As a means of meeting and discussing ideas with other Nordic teams, and creating possible collaborations, we were joined by the teams from the University of Copenhagen, Lund, Uppsala, Linköbing, Oslo, Chalmers and Stockholm for a weekend full of learning and fun.

All the teams were excited to participate and when the time came, we were a total of 89 iGEM participants ready to spend the weekend at our university.

David, Lina, and Tenna, with help from the rest of the team, worked full hours the weeks up to the happening to make sure everything would work smoothly. Hotels had to be booked, food had to be planned and ordered, materials and protocols for experiments had to be prepared and a general schedule full of talks and activities had to be planned. Thankfully, we had great help from the iGEM DTU team from 2017, who helped with the experimental part of the weekend.

The Serious Part

We had the great honor of having many accomplished people come and educate us in not only iGEM and the creation of Biobricks, but also in general team- and project work; alumni from earlier DTU Biobuilders teams held a panel session regarding life after iGEM and what skills gained from the competition they continue to use. Our Ph.D. supervisor, and former iGEM participant, Kyle Rothschild taught the importance of human practice and held a workshop in the art of pitching. Our supervisor, Chris Workman, held a very informative lecture regarding the iGEM registry and biological parts, as well as the Interlab study and alternative assembly techniques. And last, but not least, we had the great honor of having Abigail Sison from headquarters talk about the after iGEM initiative and join the panel session regarding team dynamics, outreach, PR, economy and funding activities, where all the participants could ask any questions as they wanted.

The full time schedule can be found here.

The Fun Part

However, it was not all long hours of work and no fun. Small social events were held throughout the weekend, but Saturday night we had a long star run with mixed teams, planned by Nicolai, where the entire team had positioned themselves around DTU with creative, and maybe a bit Danish, humored challenges; for example at one post, participants would guess whether a tweet was made by Donald Trump or Kanye West.

"My fingers are long and beautiful, as, it has been well been documented, are various other parts of my body."

"I have no interest in working with anyone who is too important or too good or too traditional to take a call at 3am."

At another post, teams were given a short time period to create a beer opener using only an onion, elastics, tape and fresh baking yeast. Easy to say there were some interesting solutions. One team even had the brilliant idea of hiding a bottle opener inside the onion.

Even though it was a tiring and stressful weekend, we all enjoyed the opportunity of hosting an event of such caliber and the reviews given made it worth every can of caffeinated beverage replacing actual food.

“I (and the rest of my team) really had a great time at DTU, thank you so much for the amazing experience! Hopefully, we will all see each other again soon at the next event.”

“It was a really nice weekend altogether and a good learning experience.”

“I think you did amazing. It might be different for the people on the advanced level but as an undergraduate, I felt it was a nice overview.”

“All of it was great! Good job arranging!”

“Thank you so much for the lab exercises!! And food, I can’t imagine how hard it was to organize everything 😱❤️”

“I honestly never plated bacteria before and I found it very amusing and necessary.”

“All of it was great! Good job arranging!”

❮ ❯