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From 2012.igem.org

Synthetic Biology CAS-conference Munich

3 days of learning about synthetic biology, presenting our project to experts in the field and having fun with our and other teams.

One of the big learning and team building experiences that we have had in during the project was our adventure to Munich. Here, the Centre of Advanced Studies held a three day conference about Synthetic Biology at the end of July. The conference would include talks of amongst others Jay Keasling (Berkeley), Martin Fussennegger (Zurich) and Eriko Takano (Groningen). There was also the possibility to apply for a talk or poster presentation at this conference. We as a team were not only very interested in the broad applications of synthetic biology, but also interested in presenting our project to these experts and hearing their opinions about our vision.

We therefore applied to present two projects, our main project and the constructor. Both abstracts were accepted for poster presentations. It was a great learning experience for us to make a good scientific poster. It was the first time we did such a presentation for a big audience, so it was a good training for making the poster for the jamboree.

Fortunately, other iGEM teams also joined the conference. In total, 10 teams were present. 8 teams from Germany and the UCL (University College of London) team also applied for poster presentations. The whole experience was the single best team building activity that we could imagine. On Monday morning, we had to wake up at 3:00 AM to start our 800 km trip to Munich in our cosy student car caravan. The road trip took us through the German country to the Bavarian region, famous for its nice life styles and how our German team member quotes “where you can enjoy REAL beer”. It was a beautiful day and the trip was filled with jokes, laughter and enthusiasm to our little working trip.

Upon arrival we installed our information stance and started the educational part of our trip, listening to the talks. It was inspiring to hear how diverse the synthetic biology world was, and we had a lot of new ideas from different fields that we found attractive. After the first sessions it was finally up to our poster to attract people to our projects. It was great to see what kind of elements were found interesting about our poster, a real help for determining what should be on our final poster for the jamborees. We learned a lot from the comments and questions, and had an overall good feeling about the poster presentations.

In the evenings, it was of course the moment to get to know the other iGEM teams. And what could be a better place than one of the traditional Beer gardens that Munich has. The iGEM team of Munich arranged a big table where all the teams could join. Wageningen_UR spread the team to integrate with the other teams, to learn about their projects and of course to get familiar with our fellow iGEM teams. We had a lot of fun, and we have taught the other teams some nice Dutch student games. We all enjoyed the evening until late.

The following days were filled with the same programme. It was a great mixture of learning, laughing with our team members, learning how to present our work, building a great team spirit and meeting other teams. We are definitely looking forward to meet the teams again and to see how far they have come in the competition, and if they still know the Dutch games. We are sure that this 3 day conference was a just a minor teaser about what we will encounter at the jamborees, with a big learning experience. We are looking forward to exceed this experience at the actual jamboree(s).

Poster of our VLP project at the CAS conference

Poster of our Constructor project at the CAS conference

Having a beer with the team of UCL'