Team:Calgary/Collaborations
Overview
If there’s anything that the global pandemic has taught us, it’s that we are better together than we are alone. Here at iGEM Calgary, we are committed to fostering meaningful relationships with our fellow iGEMers. Take a glance at the page below to learn about each of the collaborations that we took part in this year.
iGEM Storybook Collaboration
For the education of a younger audience, we understand that science communication is more effective when presented in more engaging and graphical formats. Thus we piloted initiatives focused on spreading awareness of the electronic waste problem and synthetic biology education to the age group of 9-12 with a storybook collaboration with FCB-Monterrey from Mexico. The storybook features the environmental issues that each participating iGEM team’s problem was focussed around. Readers get to follow Lan-E’s misadventure in a story book with fun visuals. The book ranges from our problem of e-waste to other problems involving the environment with participating iGEM teams from all over the world.
At the end of the collaboration we had seven great stories that were in the storybook, highlighting important environmental problems that each team addressed. The other teams that joined the collaboration were iGEM AGT, UMaryland, iGEM UAM, iGEM Perú, and iGEM Ecuador. In order to get feedback on the storybook, we organized an event with FCB-Monterrey to do a “read-aloud” of the book to elementary school children and had them (fill out a survey/draw a picture of what they learned) so we could actually see how the children’s reaction to the storybook and get tangible results from it as well!
Figure 1.iGEM Calgary and FCB-UANL Storybook Collaboration Event
Figure 2.Drawings from the iGEM Calgary and FCB-UANL Storybook Event
CONFERENCES
JulyGEM
iGEM Calgary is devoted to improving inter-team collaborations, fostering friendships, and increasing our scientific knowledge. This year marked our third annual JulyGEM event, and second virtual JulyGEM. JulyGEM is an international iGEM conference, where teams from around the world join virtually in order to strengthen their projects, meet other teams, and learn something new! Over the course of two days, we attended talks from several speakers, had a pitch competition, and participated in ‘Synbio Socials’ - a social event for all teams after the day’s work was over.
The first major part of JulyGEM were our featured speakers. Each speaker had a thirty-minute interactive time slot, where they discussed their area of interest and held a Q&A session with the audience.
The talks were as follows:
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Science Communication & You,Zack Anderson - Director, Youth Education at TELUS Spark
Creative Destruction Labs and Synbio Innovation, Kate Skotheim - Venture Leader, Ag Stream at Creative Destruction Labs
From Innovation to Commercialization, Daria Venkova - Co-Founder, Purley A&D Consulting
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How to Make a Great iGEM Project, Harland Brandon & Luc Roberts - CEO and CSO of Allos Bioscience
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Life After iGEM,Rachelle Varga, Sravya Kakumanu, Christian Emond & Andrew Symes - Former iGEM Calgary members
The second major part of JulyGEM was our informal pitch competition, where each participating team had five minutes to pitch their project to a panel of experienced judges and participate in a five minute long Q&A session. After pitching, each team was required to give feedback to other teams in their pitch session. This resulted in pitching practice, getting to know other teams’ projects, and also receiving feedback on all aspects of the project.
Check out the 2021 iGEM teams who participated in JulyGEM below!
cGEM
cGEM is a Canada-wide iGEM conference in which Canadian iGEM teams have the opportunity to showcase their project, receive feedback from judges, and attend speaker sessions relating to the field of synthetic biology. It is also a chance for Canadian teams to interact with one another and build a closer iGEM community. We had the opportunity to present our project, Neocycle, during the 2021 cGEM conference. Check out the cGEM 2021 conference page for more details!
SDG Conference
In order to support the sustainability initiatives of our project, we participated in TAS Taipei’s SDG conference. This collaboration supports UN SDG #17: Partnership for the goals, and allowed us to meet with many teams from across the world to discuss and present our sustainability goals.
Figure 3.SDG Conference
OTHER SMALL, FUN COLLABORATIONS
iGEM Warwick
We have also participated in a collaboration with iGEM Warwick and had given them material in order for them to make a booklet that features a range of iGEM team projects. This booklet will also be distributed to 16-18 year olds and allow them to learn more about the vast applications of synthetic biology.
iGEM Maastricht Journal
iGEM Calgary took part in iGEM Maastricht’s Proceedings Journal where teams all over the globe presented their project through proceedings articles, with the journal acting as a compendium of iGEM projects for 2021. We submitted 3 articles, which underwent rigorous screening through abstract evaluation and open peer review (where we reviewed other papers and had our papers reviewed by peers) to ensure the quality of the work included in the journal.
iGEM Guelph
iGEM Calgary participated in iGEM Guelph’s interview collaboration. For this collaboration, a variety of teams provided information about their project to iGEM Guelph which was then compiled into a source of educational material for students 14-18 years old in Canada.
iGEM Düsseldorf
At the very beginning of iGEM, the postcard collaboration with iGEM Düsseldorf was a great way to show our project to other iGEM teams all over the world. We sent 100 postcards outlining our project to Germany, so they could send it to the rest of the participating iGEM teams.
iGEM Rio UFRJ Brazil Biosensor
We did a collaboration with iGEM Rio UFRJ Brazil where they gave us some advice on biosensors and we talked about our projects to each other. We also exchanged protocols regarding Elektra so they could have a better understanding of what we were trying to accomplish and they also gave us some great papers and protocols on their project as well.
Figure 4.iGEM Calgary and Rio UFRJ Brazil Collaboration Meeting
