Team:Carnegie Mellon/Colaborations

From 2014.igem.org

Revision as of 02:22, 13 October 2014

Carnegie Mellon was able to host an iGEM meetup on Saturday, September 6th at the Mellon Institute. A total of six teams and about 50 participants attended including a high school team that the University of Pittsburgh had been mentoring. The following teams were in attendance:

• University of Michigan
• University of Michigan Software Team
• Pennsylvania State University
• University of Pittsburgh
• Montgomery High School
• Carnegie Mellon University

The day started with each team presenting their respective projects while the other teams wrote down feedback and questions. We then transitioned to a Q&A panel of past participants and their experiences with iGEM. Some Carnegie Mellon and University of Pittsburgh advisors as well as some members of the Michigan teams had previously participated in iGEM and answered questions relating to the Jamboree, forming a team, picking a project, etc.

As the final part of the meet up, all of the teams socialized and discussed projects while rotating through the workshops we had set up. There were initially three scheduled workshops: poster, public speaking and wiki. However, the representative for the poster workshop was unable to attend. The presentation and wiki workshops were very successful in helping teams recognize their strengths, weaknesses, and working through any technical issues as far as the wiki. Professor Julia Deems of Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business specializes in communication. She was able to give each team feedback specific to their presentation on what they can do to make more of an impact at the Jamboree. The wiki workshop was led by Jonathan deWerd, a graduate student in biomedical engineering at Carnegie Mellon, and he was able to provide feedback to any teams that had questions about putting together their wiki.

Over the course of the day, all of the teams were able to learn more about other iGEM projects as well as advance their own project further due to the conversation and feedback that comes from collaboration. We had great fun learning about what everyone else had been to this summer and we will definitely recognize the familiar faces when we all go to the Giant Jamboree!

This is the first year that IvyTech from South Bend, IN has an iGEM team! The team reached out to Carnegie Mellon University in order to collaborate with us and help us out in any way that we needed. Since school had started up, the outreach duo could not take the time to experiment with dyes we wanted to incorporate into the wheat germ experiment if only for the simple reason that we wanted the DNA that kids can visualize at the end to contrast more against the solution in the tube. Sending out one of the kits to IvyTech was a brilliant way to get results, have another team help, and encourage camaraderie. IvyTech was able to tell us whether the dye should be added before or after the isopropyl alcohol, as well as give us different color examples and the concentration amount needed to achieve the desired effect. The results looked great and we were able to confirm that we want to include dyes in the kits for visual aide and how high the concentration would have to be in order to get the optimal visual. Now, whenever a wheat germ kit is being borrowed from DNAZone, a pro-mega (blue and orange) or methyl orange dye will be included in the teacher’s kit to give to the students should she or he wish to do so. Thanks IvyTech!

(NITEESH)