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Organization of the Meet Up Ile-de-France 2016

We established a partnership with the iGEM Pasteur team in order to organize the Meet Up Ile-de-France, an event gathering all the Parisian iGEM teams. Paris is a big city and its metropolitan area has a huge impact on the scientific community around the world. Parisian universities and research institutes are at the heart of the French scientific production and all the iGEM teams were created thanks to that immense influence. This year, the 5 iGEM Parisian teams are iGEM Paris Saclay, iGEM Pasteur, iGEM IONIS, iGEM Evry and iGEM Bettencourt.

The event was hosted by the Pasteur Institute and organized for 3 months by iGEM Paris Saclay and iGEM Pasteur, with the help and consulting of iGEM IONIS. Each Parisian team had the opportunity to make a 20-minute presentation of their project in the presence of a jury. This jury had the purpose of giving advices on iGEM standards, oratory skills, presentation of scientific content and science popularization. The presentations were followed by two seminars on Intellectual Property and the permanent exhibition of a drone model provided by the Civic Drone startup company. The event also included several social gatherings between the teams such as breakfast, a picnic and a gathering after the Meet Up. We believe, as one of the organizing team, that these moments were also of great importance since they allowed the teams to know each other professionally and individually, an essential step towards a full engagement with the iGEM ideal of partnership.

Interteams cooperations

iGEM Cardiff team

We first met the iGEM Cardiff team at the European Meet Up held in Paris “The European Experience 2016”. We realized our projects had some similar aspects and decided to collaborate. We had a Skype conference call during in July (we had started experimenting a couple of weeks earlier) to discuss about the different dCas9 both teams were using. This opportunity allowed us to share with another team some of the conclusions and problems we had. It was a great insight into the outcomes of another team dealing with a similar challenge as ours.

iGEM EPF Lausanne

We were first contacted via Facebook by Marie Matos to set a date for a Skype conference call with the whole team. We had the opportunity to discuss about our projects and to give them [http://igem.today/2016/08/11/may-the-promoter-strength-be-with-paris-saclay/ an interview for their website igem.today]. They have gathered information about several teams and their projects and displayed a few interviews per week: our interview was in the home page during the second week. We were really glad to be invited for such a great initiative. We had a lot of fun while helping to spread more information about Synthetic Biology.

iGEM TEC CEM

Our team was approached via Facebook by Enrique Salas to participate on a survey related to Self-medication and Public Health. Later on the team also showed interest in getting to know better our project. After some messages exchanged, we offered to send them a copy of our recent poster designed for “The European Experience 2016”. This was an opportunity to share knowledge about layout, structure and content of a scientific poster, a very important feature of the iGEM experience.

iGEM Manchester

Our team was contacted via Twitter by iGEM Manchester to take part on a survey related to Alcohol consumption. There was quite a fuzz over this survey among our team members since the topic “Alcohol consumption” is very appealing. We contributed with over 15 entries and had a lot of fun while answering.

iGEM Mentorship Program

We enrolled on the Mentorship Program proposed by iGEM this year. We received a first contact from our Mentor, Fabian Fröhlich, and our Team Coordinator, Liza Figueiredo by email. Further on a monthly schedule of Skype conference calls was settled with Fabian, who is a bioinformatician and has a great deal of iGEM experience. The Mentorship Program allowed us to be more aware of the iGEM standards and to come to our mentor with several obstacles our project faced through the course of the months. We were pleased to have taken part on this experience because it brought to the team fresh eyes when needed, external opinions and therefore new perspectives we could not have had otherwise.