Team:Marburg/Meetup
SynDustry Fuse. Produce. Use.
iGEM meets Marburg
Connecting interdisciplinary teams, arising collaborations, opening discussions and building friendships we hosted the event "iGEM meets Marburg" in the first weekend of August. We were able to welcome all german iGEM teams, as well as one Danish team to our 2nd annual German iGEM Meetup. It is currently the biggest Meetup in Germany connecting young scientists interested in synthetic biology. Even though the focus of our event was connecting many people and sharing insights from our projects, we wanted to create enough space for social activities. Over 90 people from several fields of research came to together and shared their different views on synthetic biology. This interdisciplinarity led to interesting discussions and showed once more the diversity of the SynBio community. Friday evening started with a rather informal part of this Meetup, where we had a pub crawl with groups of 8 people from several teams, so all participants got to know other team members and got some insights of our little hometown. On Saturday the official part took place at the "Sprachatlas", one of the newest buildings of the Philipps University Marburg. There, all team had the possibility to present their projects and were able to collect a first constructive feedback and helpful advice on arisen problems. Besides all student teams we welcomed multiple guest speakers; Prof. Dr. Victor Sourjik, the Head and Director of Systems and Synthetic Microbiology, Wolfgang Liprecht, representative of the city of Marburg, Dr. Wiebke Wlotzka, the coordinator of the international Max Planck research school as well as Traci Haddock-Angelli, emissary of the iGEM Headquarter. Saturday afternoon was filled with social activities at the Afföllerwiesen. During a bubble soccer tournament with barbeque and drinks the intercultural and interdisciplinary exchange continued in a more informal setting. In the evening we arranged a celebration in the city center. Our Meetup ended with a collective farewell-breakfast on Sunday morning for all participants that stayed on our local campsite. All in all, we were happy to host this event for the second time now. It gave all participants the opportunity to connect with other students, to share their experiences, to implement collaborations as well as to make friends. We are looking forward to a big reunion with everyone in Boston!
