A very big part of iGEM is collaborating with and helping other teams. The amount of great iGEM projects through time shows how important it is to work together and use previous projects and ideas to make new projects. This is exactly why it is a gold medal requirement to help another iGEM team, and why we have talked to a lot to other iGEM teams about our own and their ideas. On this side of things we have chosen to help two other iGEM teams with their projects.

Mentoring a new team from a different track : Tel Hai college

Students from Tel Hai college are going to the iGEM competition for the first time. During the month of June we met with the Tel Hai students to describe and explain all about the competition.

During the meetings and conversations over time we assisted them to understand the way to prepare towards the competition. How to begin, what to put emphasis on and where it is important to go into detail.

During the months of July to September we advised Team Tel Hai regarding dealing with the management of the competition. Providing guidelines about how they should commence, Plan and execute each step according to the competition schedules. The cooperation between us and the college students was close throughout the entire period of preparation for the competition. The meetings included close accompaniment starting by studying the idea of the cooperative competition, registering on the site, advice on fundraising, getting to know the iGEM site, important details on working with WIKI and more.

The cooperation has given us a good feeling because we, high school students, were assisting college students who are competing on a different track in the competition. Meeting with the students gave us motivation to continue working; they were grateful and very very nice.

Mini IGEM- collaboration with – BGU , Technion and Tel Hai students

This year three teams from Israel will be competing at the iGEM: One team representing Ben Gurion University, The Technion team, Tel – Hai College and us from Danciger Darca High School, Kiryat Shmona. All competitors met at the mini-iGEM at the Faculty of Biotechnology of food at the Technion. This was the reason for a meet-up with the teams from Israel. The conference was very important especially for calming emotions and excitement. The corridor chats enabled us to receive advice in many areas we were not sure about. All the senior students were very nice, tolerant and patient.

It was a very emotional day because all the teams presented their research, professional questions were asked and tips were given about the presentations and content.

For us it was a very significant day.

Team Mingdao

During the summer we held a Skype conversation with Taiwanese team and received tips from them on lab work with E.Coli germs. We told them what we think should be done in Human Practice. In the framework of our work we built a survey which we sent in order to enrich our knowledge base. The data we collected assisted in statistics to analyze the research.

At the same time we also helped the team by filling in a questionnaire to gather their data. Undoubtedly the mutual assistance for both teams made it possible to progress in their research.