oGEM - Ontario iGEM Collective
This year, QGEM collaborated with the Ontario Genetically Engineered Machine Collective, which is composed of iGEM teams from the universities of Toronto, Ryerson (new this year), Waterloo, McMaster, and Ottawa. With oGEM, we meet several times during the year to discuss ways to promote iGEM in Ontario, funding strategies, project troubleshooting, and new ways to collaborate for wet lab, dry lab, and policy and practice departments.
One of the oGEM collaborations featured this year was promoting iGEM at the 66th annual conference for the Canadian Society of Microbiologists (CSM) venue at Toronto in June. It was an overall wonderful opportunity to promote synthetic biology awareness amongst the conference delegates while also telling professionals about our research within each of our individual iGEM team projects. At the end of the conference, each of the oGEM teams had an opportunity to present their 2016 projects to professionals in the field of microbiology, specifically focusing on the societal applications of our projects in the fields of medicine and technology.
