Team:Pitt/Human Practices/collaborations

We reached out to the 2014 Montgomery High School iGEM Team on July 2nd, 2014, to collaborate on their project, since Montgomery’s project is also related to acne. We found the 2014 Montgomery iGEM Team had difficulty completing their experiments on time, because their team was new to the synthetic biology lab setting. To help out, we invited Montgomery iGEM to the 2014 Pittsburgh Meet-Up and showed them around our lab and our equipment. We wish them best of luck in the 2015 iGEM competition! Greg Poterewicz, founder of the 2014 Stony Brook iGEM Team, reached out to us for advice on general team management, which we were more than happy to offer! Similar to the Pitt iGEM Team, this was the first year for the Stony Brook iGEM Team, and they were struggling with the same issues we were: raising funds, delegating work, staying motivated, etc. We met with Greg on July 11th, 2014, to share our experiences starting the Pitt iGEM Team.

Early on in the team-creation process, our mentors provided strong support to help us off the ground, and we learned a lot along the way. Namely, we had read about basic management techniques, such as planning distinct goals, and assigning clear tasks with solid deadlines to everyone. We have found if you can ensure accountability, then work flows more smoothly, and deadlines seem less daunting! Our meeting with Greg, as well as discussions with the Montgomery team, were influential in creating a “How to Start an iGEM Team” guide, which can be found on our blog.

The 2014 Carnegie Mellon iGEM Team is right next door to us and made for an instinctive collaboration opportunity. Also with the Carnegie Mellon team, we presented an overview of iGEM and our 2014 projects to a group of undergraduates conducting computational biology research at the University of Pittsburgh on July 11, 2014. The presentation covered the biological, modeling, and outreach components of our iGEM projects. We specifically focused on our logical model and its relation to computational biology. Overall, our presentation was well-received and incited the spark in several undergraduates to start iGEM teams at their own universities.

With the Carnegie Mellon iGEM Team, we also participated in the Pittsburgh iGEM meet-up on September 6, 2014, along with teams from Penn State, University of Michigan, and Montgomery High School. The meet-up consisted of practice presentations and information sessions on creating a poster, public speaking, and constructing a wiki.

We also participated in the University of Virginia’s survey “Synthetic Biology Global Acceptance and Awareness”. When researching the skin probiotics market, we found AOBiome, a company devoted to products that restore the skin’s microbiome. We reached out to them for their thoughts on the skin microbiome and probiotics and presented the information in a blog post published on August 29, 2014.