The SoCal iGEM Meet-up was a great opportunity for our team to share ideas and challenges with one another. iGEM members from UCLA, UCSD, Alverno High School and Marburg attended the meet-up. Each team gave a presentation on their project and were given feedback from the other teams. We then went on to discuss the structures of our iGEM teams, challenges we face, and solutions that might work for those challenges. Discussion lead to relationships and mini mentorships being built as the high school members of our team were able to stay in contact with Alverno High, a first year iGEM team, to mentor them through some of the struggles they were facing. It was decided that Southern California is the best. :)

Imperials iGEM’s 2016 team is working to establish a database of information that allows for researchers to view growing conditions for co-culturing organisms. In this collaboration we were asked to make growth curve using our strains of cyanobacteria. It involved growing cultures at varying temperatures and taking OD using the Spectrophotometer.

Our advisor, Jennifer Tsui, filled out a survey for TU Delft answering questions about last year’s competition and how it influenced policy and education.