Attributions

The faculty advisor of the ASIJ_Tokyo team visited our lab, and we began a collaboration process, since they were a new team this year, we were able to help them in a mentorship role. Throughout the year our team leaders were in contact with ASIJ_Tokyo’s team leaders, and discussed strategies on how to best run team meetings, track project progress, and set up a lab notebook. They also helped us by testing our nanoparticle calculator, and providing us with user feedback.

We have continued and strengthened our long standing partnership with National Yang Ming University (NYMU_Taipei). This year three members from TAS (Justin, Catherine and Yvonne) are members on both NYMU and TAS teams. They learned the cloning cycle from TAS and helped run experiments for NYMU throughout the year. In Boston, they will also help NYMU present their project at the Giant Jamboree.

NYMU-Taipei also hosted a summer camp for our team members, where they taught us about different aspects of iGEM and synthetic biology. In return, we helped them increase the efficiency of their models using equations from their literature research and ran simulations using their experimental data.

Finally, they also gave tremendous advice on troubleshooting our cloning procedure during the summer months when we ran that majority of our wet lab experiments. We really value the relationship we have with NYMU and look forward to more collaborations in the future.

These collaborations have not only allowed us to help each other, but they have allowed us to bond by exchange ideas. It has been incredibly fun to share stories about lab work, our successes, and even failures.