SYNENERGENE Calls for Proposals/Rathenau Instituut

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DRAFT

Take your iGEM Project to the next level!

Partner: Rathenau Instituut

Due date: May 01, 2014 (tentative)
Questions: contact Virgil Rerimassie, v.rerimassie AT rathenau.nl

Is your iGEM team looking for an exciting human practices challenge? Would you like to take the potential of your project to the next level by exploring it with various stakeholders? And would you like to get support and funding throughout this entire process? If your answer is "yes" your team just might be an excellent candidate for our SYNENERGENE call.

Introduction

The Rathenau Instituut is partner of SYNENERGENE, a four-year collaborative project funded by the European Commission, aimed at fostering Responsible Research and Innovation in synthetic biology (SynBio). In order to examine how SynBio can be optimally embedded in society, the Rathenau Instituut and its SYNENERGENE partners aim to conduct real-time technology assessments of potential SynBio applications. To this end, we seek collaboration with iGEM teams and focus on promising ideas for SynBio applications as developed in iGEM projects. Teams can dedicate their policy and practices (formerly: human practices) work to a process of real-time technology assessment and will be supported by SYNENERGENE partners throughout the process. Teams can apply for support and funding by submitting to us proposals.

Rewards and support

Awarded teams will receive €5.000 each and be assisted in their work by SYNENERGENE partners, providing them an excellent way to work on the policy and practices dimension of their project through real-time technology assessment and to enhance the overall quality of their project.

Requirements

Selected iGEM teams will have to contribute in their Policy & Practices work to a process of real-time technology assessment by elaborating two different kinds of future scenarios relating to SynBio applications envisaged by the teams:

  1. Application scenarios

    Application scenarios offer detailed and realistic descriptions of how SynBio ideas can lead to actual applications in society, including: design criteria for the products proposed, target producers and users of the products, the needs and costs involved, legal issues of patenting, regulatory requirements, potential safety, social and ethical implications, and available or conceivable alternatives.

  2. Techno-moral scenarios

    A techno-moral scenario is a tool to stimulate imagination, reflection and debate about ways in which SynBio applications may transform our society through wider impacts, including ethical, legal and social issues.

SYNENERGENE partners will take up the scenarios as a starting point for an interactive process of technology assessment, involving a variety of stakeholders and iGEM team members in workshop settings with the aim to develop socially robust agendas for SynBio innovation. Scenarios will also be used by SYNENERGENE partners as a tool in organizing public debates on SynBio futures. For more information about the kind of scenarios that selected iGEM teams will have to deliver, please expand the box below.

Themes

For this first call we are looking in particular for projects dedicated to antibiotics production, the use of cyanobacteria as a platform, and the use of SynBio for conservation. We hope for proposals from teams in the Health and Medicine, Energy, and Environment tracks, but also from teams in the Policy and Practices, and Entrepreneurship tracks. Proposals relating to the three themes are given special preference, but ideas for other themes are also more than welcome!

  1. Antibiotics – Resistance to antibiotics is becoming an increasing public health concern. SynBio may make valuable contributions to addressing this challenge. For instance, by developing micro-organisms that produce novel antibiotics.
  2. Cyanobacteria – SynBio researchers have high hopes that cyanobacteria hold the potential to become a new sustainable platform to produce biofuels and other useful substances. Do Cyanobacteria have the potential to become an important platform for iGEM as well?
  3. Conservation – Recently, conservationists and synthetic biologists have started joining hands and exploring possibilities. One of the ideas is using SynBio to tackle ocean dead zones, where marine life has been killed by algal blooms. How could iGEM contribute to ideas for nature conservation?

Proposal and application

Interested iGEM teams may submit a proposal (2 page A4, one thousand words maximum), including:

  1. The SynBio design
  2. Potential application of the SynBio design
  3. An indication of practices, actors, regulations and impacts that will be addressed in application and techno-moral scenarios.

Please send your proposal to hq (AT) igem.org by May 01, 2014.

More information

If you would like to receive more information please contact Virgil Rerimassie at the Rathenau Instituut: v.rerimassie (AT) rathenau.nl. For more information about the envisaged process of real time technology assessment, please expand the box below.