iGEM is about making teams of students making synthetic biology projects. We encourage teams to work with parts and build biological devices in the lab. But we are inclusive and want all teams to work on many other types of problems in synbio. Robotic assembly, microfluidics, low cost equipment and measurement hardware are all areas ripe for innovation in synbio.
Teams who are interested in working with hardware as a side project are encouraged to apply for the hardware award.
Inspiration
You can look at what other teams did to get some inspiration!
Here are a few examples: