Team:CCA San Diego/Collaborations
Throughout the 2021 iGEM season, we collaborated consistently with Del Norte High School (DNHS San Diego), participating in many constructive meetings (see Partnership). We also collaborated in a couple of virtual meetups with WVHS_SanDiego_USA and Lambert_GA.
WVHS_SanDiego_USA
Our team reached out to and arranged for virtual meetings with Westview High School, a nearby high school iGEM team, which later led to subsequent meetings and collaborative projects. During these meetings, which were primarily held through the months of August and September, we managed to share our project ideas, discuss wet and dry lab work, modelling, and plans for science communication and human practices projects.
Since this was Westview’s first year participating in iGEM, our team captains and other experienced members were able to deliver some advice and assistance in regards to procedure and tools. For example, we gave WVHS_SanDiego_USA suggestions to use GNU Octave for creating ODE models and tips on using NCBI’s Gene Expression Omnibus for their project. However, our team also received benefits from these collaboration meetings, as it provided us with a fresh perspective and they were extremely helpful in pointing out potential flaws in our project work, especially in Science Communication and Human Practices.
Lambert_GA
Our team also reached out to Lambert_GA, an Atlanta-based high school in which we have collaborated with in previous iGEM years. In contrast to WVHS_SanDiego_USA, Lambert_GA was extremely experienced and had very dedicated members working. We first contacted them in mid-July through Melanie Kim and Neha Lingam, after which we met up multiple times over the next few months to introduce our projects, and to exchange tips primarily on lab work and modeling, as we saw that they were already pretty far into their project, which attempted to deal with nutrient fluctuations in relation to hydroponic systems.
Due to their extensive expertise and well-organized team, even having a class during school hours dedicated to the competition, we subsequently arranged meetings in a far more “mentee” position. In these meetings, which like the first one focused on lab and modeling, Lambert_GA provided us with valuable advice on using MATLAB as well as the importance of temperature for Lithium Acetate. Lambert also assisted our team’s leaders with team management and deadlines, helping us to achieve our deadlines on time and creating an effective meeting system to further focus members on their respective teams while still being involved with the team as a whole.
DNHS_SanDiego_CA
DNHS_SanDiego_CA and CCA_San_Diego teams held weekly, thirty minute virtual meetings via zoom from June 28th to September 20th, totalling fourteen partnership/collaborative sessions (twelve of which were regular, weekly meetings). During each meeting, both teams would first give a recap, updating the other on each past week’s accomplishments and progress, while the other would ask questions and provide feedback and suggestions. Afterwards, we would go deeper into specific aspects of our projects which we would be particularly concerned about. For example, we gave assistance to the DNHS team on modeling and the planning of their workshop, as part of their science communication component. Both teams assisted with advertising each other’s Human Practices surveys and also discussed methods of potentially linking our projects together.
