Past events

Synthetic Biology - Short Past and Long Future

Randy Rettberg

President of iGEM - International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Foundation Randy Rettberg is the man behind iGEM, the global competition for undergraduates and high school students in designing brand new biological parts, or “genetically engineered machines”. An engineer by trade, he worked for years at internet pioneer Bolt, Beranek and Newman, at Apple, and Sun Microsystems, until he left the computer industry to work on Synthetic Biology at MIT. iGEM graduated from MIT two years ago and Randy is now President of the iGEM Foundation. iGEM also operates the Registry of Standard Biological Parts, a continuously growing library of genetic parts that can be mixed and matched to enable easier construction of synthetic biology devices and systems: it provides a resource of available genetic parts to iGEM teams and academic labs across the world, including the Oxford iGEM team.

Dr. Richard Kelwick

Researcher at the EPSRC National Centre for Synthetic Biology and Innovation, Imperial College London Over five years of independent research experience, primarily in molecular biology, cancer biology and synthetic biology. Currently working on cell-free transcription and translation (TX-TL) systems to develop a high-throughput prototyping platform for biopart characterisation. Scientific advisor and project manager of three successful iGEM teams, 2011-2013. Most recently, Richard was the lead advisor for the iGEM team Plasticity, at Imperial College London, which came third out of over 200 teams at the world final, held at MIT.

Dr. Jarek Bryk

National Centre for Biotechnology Education, University of Reading Jarek works at the National Centre for Biotechnology Education on a project to facilitate teaching of synthetic biology on an undergraduate level. He develops experimental kits that will be incorporated in synthetic biology curricula.He currently mentors the iGEM Reading team.