Team:Vanderbilt/About
About the Team
Since its inception in the fall of 2013, Vanderbilt iGEM has committed itself to embracing the innovative and interdisciplinary spirit of the iGEM model. As the first team to register three interrelated projects in one competition year, we pride ourselves as much on our ambition as we do on our research acumen. We are comprised of a handful of dedicated undergraduate students with passions for all facets of synthetic biology, from bioengineering and molecular biology to bioinformatics and biophysical modeling.
One of the distinguishing features of our team is that we are entirely student organized and operated. Our university affords us immense scholastic and administrative latitude, and we take pride in having financed our own lab space, conceived of and executed our research independent of a parent laboratory. This freedom has allowed our organization to be as valuable as possible for aspiring researchers looking to tackle all aspects of the scientific process. Since attending our first conference, we have cycled through three lab spaces (the first of which was a closet formerly used for fish culture), tens of thousands of dollars in material and cash donations, and two generations of participants, and we are incredibly optimistic about our trajectory moving forward.
