Collaboration was the theme of this past spring, summer, and this fall.

We have created a computational synthetic biology tool, SBiDer, that fosters collaboration among the global synthetic biology community. SBiDer also has a potential to bridge between other fields of biology and the field of synthetic biology by enabling ontological interpretations of biochemical reactions as well as genetic interactions. Furthermore, SBiDer database can become the first universal database for the field of synthetic biology. Lastly, we have minimized the barriers for collaborative development of SBiDer by modularly engineering SBiDer on an open source platform. We encourage the global community to extend, develop, and optimize SBiDer - together.

Our team has developed SBiDer from the ground up, and my primary tasks have been the engineering of the database and the search algorithm. Engineering the database and the search algorithm were daunting tasks that challenged me in many ways. Yet, I embraced the challenge. The more arduous the project became, the harder I worked. As a result, this assiduous process has provided me with a fantastic opportunity to improve my skills in computer programming, bioinformatics, and mathematical modeling. Now, I truly appreciate the value of the challenges that I faced and the priceless opportunity of this education.

Developing SBiDer codes was hard, and effectively leading a groups of people was even harder. Technical challenges not only made me a critical thinker, but also harnessed my skills as leader that ultimately made me a better scientist. In the process of interacting with my teammates, I felt a maturation of myself. I have learned to be more conscious about others’ struggles. I learned to sacrifice for others in developing the project, which is key in teamwork. I learned a lot about proper teamwork ethics. Looking back, I am surprised how much I have learned about communication, effective leadership, project development, and more. I believe these skills have made me a better scientist. Without working together, we would not have been able to develop SBiDer. SBiDer is a result of our communal effort.

I believe that science and collaboration are closely intertwined, for collaboration fundamentally advances science. I am grateful for the opportunity in developing SBiDer and working with my team: Joaquin, Jenhan, Justin, Ben, Ryan, Andreas, KP, Lauren, Valeriy, Gary, Fernando, Luyao, and Rohit. I learned tremendously from the collaboration that was coalesced with the science. And finally, we made SBiDer. The past seven months have been filled with learning opportunities, arising in unexpected manners that have led a an enjoyable and fruitful journey.

I hope the community enjoys SBiDer and can contribute to its further development.
All in all, collaboration was not only the theme of this past spring, summer, and this fall, but it will be the theme of my life.

After my first discussion with the graduate students, who were just about to launch an iGEM project at UCSD, my impression was that the aims of this project were extremely ambitious. This made me very curious and I was excited to be on board. It soon fleshed out what would be the precise goal of the project and which tasks should be done. The great organization and strict planing, the regular meetings and terrific support of the undergraduate students by their mentors finally made this project an ongoing success.

During the project, everybody could learn and experience a lot of new aspects of research in diverse fields, reaching from project planing, organization, and conduction on the one side through scientific disciplines bioinformatics, database management systems, software design, interactive graph drawing, data exchange formats and standardization, and synthetic biology to communication, writing, and presentation skills on the other side. It can be assumed that this large interdisciplinary and highly collaborative team work was the first experience of this kind for the majority of students and therefore a great experience for all participants. It is remarkable that the project was always focused on the overall goal to obtain a useful product at the end rather than endlessly discussing tiny details of each aspect.

As assumed at the very beginning, this was an enormously challenging effort, but all participants made this project a success. To me, it is still amazing how all this could be achieved in this short time and while in parallel educating the undergraduate students in so many disciplines.