Judging/Awards

The following is a list of Awards given by the iGEM Judges and some general information about how Award decisions are made. For examples of award-winning work, see the 2013 Jamboree Results.

iGEM Medals

New Track teams must meet medal criteria specific to their track. Please see your New Track pages for more details on what you need to accomplish to be awarded a medal.

All teams can earn medals. Teams must nominate themselves using the Judging Form, which will be available later. The three levels of medals, from lowest to highest are Bronze, Silver, and Gold. Requirements for each medal are:

Bronze. The following 5 goals must be achieved:

1. Team registration.
2. Complete Judging form.
3. Team Wiki.
4. Present a poster and a talk at the iGEM Jamboree.
5. Document at least one new standard BioBrick Part or Device used in your project/central to your project and submit this part to the iGEM Registry (submissions must adhere to the iGEM Registry guidelines). Please note you must submit this new part to the iGEM Parts Registry. A new application of and outstanding documentation (quantitative data showing the Part’s/ Device’s function) of a previously existing BioBrick part also counts. Please see the Registry help page on how to document your contributions.

Silver: In addition to the Bronze Medal requirements, the following 4 goals must be achieved:

1. Experimentally validate that at least one new BioBrick Part or Device of your own design and construction works as expected.
2. Document the characterization of this part in the “Main Page” section of that Part’s/Device’s Registry entry.
3. Submit this new part to the iGEM Parts Registry (submissions must adhere to the iGEM Registry guidelines).
4. Your project may have implications for the environment, security, safety and ethics and/or ownership and sharing. Describe one or more ways in which these or other broader implications have been taken into consideration in the design and execution of your project.

Gold: In addition to the Bronze and Silver Medal requirements, any one or more of the following:

1. Improve the function OR characterization of an existing BioBrick Part or Device (created by another team or your own institution in a previous year), enter this information in the Registry. Please see the Registry help page on how to document your contributions.
   The growth of the Registry depends on having a broad base of reliable parts. This is why the improvement of an existing part is just as important as the creation and documentation of a new part. An "improvement" is anything that improves the functionality and ease-of-use of a part, so that it is more likely to be used by the community. For instance: strengthening the expression of a part by mutating the DNA sequence; modifying one or a few parts in construct (Device) so that it performs its intended job better; improving a cloning or expression vector that can be easily used by the entire community; and of course, troubleshooting and fixing a part reported to be non-functional. Data from an experimental comparison between the original and improved part/ device is strongly recommended.
2. Help any registered iGEM team from another school or institution by, for example, characterizing a part, debugging a construct, or modeling or simulating their system.
3. Your project may have implications for the environment, security, safety and ethics and/or ownership and sharing. Describe a novel approach that your team has used to help you and others consider these aspects of the design and outcomes of synthetic biology efforts. Please justify its novelty and how this approach might be adapted and scaled for others to use.

Special Prizes

Special prizes are awarded to honor specific innovative and unique contributions to iGEM. The iGEM 2014 judging committee hopes to award the following Special prizes, conditional on the accomplishments presented by the teams.

For the following special prizes, teams must nominate themselves using the online Judging Form.

1. Best Human Practices Advance: Will the world be a safe place if we make biology easy to engineer? How do the lessons of the past inform the discussion going forward? Think beyond just convincing people that “synthetic biology is good.” Find a new way to help human civilization consider, guide, and address the impacts of ongoing advances in biotechnology.
2. Best BioBrick Measurement Approach: There are a lot of exciting Parts in the Registry, but many Parts have still not been characterized. Designing great measurement approaches for characterizing new parts or developing and implementing an efficient new method for characterizing thousands of parts are good examples. Teams interested in competed for the Measurement prize are strongly encouraged to participate in the measurement interlab study.
3. Best Model: Mathematical models and computer simulations provide a great way to describe the functioning and operation of BioBrick Parts and Devices.

The following prizes will be awarded at the discretion of the judges:

4. Best New BioBrick Part, Natural: Most genetically-encoded functions have not yet been converted to BioBrick parts. In fact, most genes in the natural environment have likely not ever been sequenced. Thus, there are *many* opportunities to find new, cool, and important genetically encoded functions, and refine and convert the DNA encoding these functions into BioBrick standard biological parts.
   Your best natural BioBrick Part(s) should be visible on your Wiki’s Data Page (see https://igem.org/Sample_Data_Page).
5. Best New BioBrick Part or Device, Engineered: New BioBrick Devices can be made by combining existing BioBrick Parts. For example, Inverters, Amplifiers, Smell Generators, Protein Balloon Generators, Senders, Receivers, Actuators, and so on.
   Your best new BioBrick Device(s) should be visible on your Wiki’s Data Page.
6. Best Wiki: The team Wiki is the “face” of your iGEM project. The team Wikis serve as the main project information resource for future iGEM students and teams, as well as the rest of the world. This award honors the “model” Wiki page, which exemplifies what the following year’s Wikis should strive for.
7. Best Poster: Posters should be attractive, clear, and concisely present your team's work.
8. Best Presentation: Presentations should be clear, engaging, and communicate your project to a broad audience.
9. Best Two-Page Summary: We're introducing a new requirement in 2014. Teams are required to make a two page summary of their project in the style of a lab report.

Additional special prizes that may be awarded if the quality of work is sufficiently high:

10. Best Parts Collection: Did your team make a lot of great parts? Is there a team that ties all your parts together? Do you have more than 10 parts in this collection? Did you make a CRISPR collection, a MoClo collection or a collection of awesome pigment parts? Tell the judges you should be evaluated for the Best Parts Collection award!

Grand Prizes

A small number of iGEM teams will be selected by the judges as iGEM Finalists. These teams will be selected based on the overall excellence of their entire project, from choice of project, to new Parts and Devices, to the quality of the Project Description, Poster, and Presentation, to the success and impact of the project, to consideration of issues of Human Practices, and so on. There will be three finalists from both the undergraduate section and the overgraduate section.

1. Grand Prize Undergraduate: also known as the aluminum BioBrick Trophy; best overall undergraduate team project
2. First Runner-up Undergraduate: the next highest ranking undergraduate team project
3. Second Runner-up Undergraduate: the next highest ranking undergraduate team project

1. Grand Prize Overgraduate: also known as the aluminum BioBrick Trophy; best overall overgraduate team project
2. First Runner-up Overgraduate: the next highest ranking overgraduate team project
3. Second Runner-up Overgraduate: the next highest ranking overgraduate team project

Track Prizes

The iGEM 2014 judging committee hopes to award the following Area prizes, conditional on the accomplishments presented by the teams. Each prize will be awarded at the discretion of the judges. Below are brief descriptions for each Area prize:

1. Best Energy Project: World energy consumption has increased by roughly a factor of six since 1950. In May 2013, atmospheric C02 readings taken at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii surpassed 400 ppm for the first time in recorded history. Can we use synthetic biology to sustainably generate energy or create technologies that can tackle anthropogenic climate change?
2. Best Environment Project: The quality of the air, water, and land, both on Earth and other heavenly bodies, limits the happiness of humans and other creatures. Can biotechnology be used to help clean the air, provide fresh drinking water, restore or enhance soil quality, terraform a near-Earth asteroid, or protect, preserve, or enhance natural biological diversity?
3. Best Food & Nutrition Project: People need to eat. Can biotechnology be responsibly used to produce food or nutritional molecules without causing widespread shortages of either, and without harming the environment that future generations will inherit?
4. Best Foundational Advance Project: Just thirty-five years ago, scientists could not cut and paste pre-existing fragments of genetic material like we can today. The discovery and application of DNA recombination allowed us to assemble new genes. The synthetic biology community needs other enabling technologies that help to make new accomplishments possible. What are other types of basic tricks does nature use? Have you discovered and applied one that could revolutionize synthetic biology?
5. Best Health & Medicine Project: Many health and medical problems might best be addressed by improved biological technologies. What can synthetic biology do?
6. Best Information Procressing Project: The diversity and abundance of biological properties, behaviors, and parts presents a huge information processing challenge. Has your project led to an innovative system that allows us to navigate and use lots of information quickly and effectively?
7. Best Manufacturing Project: Have you ever heard of nanotechnology? Well, biology is a nanotechnology that already exists, and that actually works. The ribosome is a programmable nanoassembler embedded within a reproducing machine. Could we responsibly use biology to manufacture useful products, from the nanoscale (atoms) to the decascale (buildings and bridges)? What can biology be programmed to manufacture?
8. Best New Application Project: We're guessing that you have great ideas that nobody has ever thought about, or if they have they forgot to tell somebody else. Can you imagine an entirely new application area for biological technology?

New Track Prizes

We are introducing seven new tracks to the iGEM 2014 competition. On top of our regular tracks such as Foundational Advance and Health and Medicine, we also have the new tracks listed below. Each of the following new tracks is eligible for a best in track award.

1. Best Art and Design Project: Teams of art and design students with input from scientific advisors can use art to drive their iGEM projects, while also making scientific contributions. We are looking for projects that use art and design to consider and explore current and future implications of synthetic biology (including stakeholders, communication, pedagogy, thinking outwards).
2. Best Community Labs Project: The Community Lab Track will have the same focus on bench research as the traditional iGEM track, however we are also looking for projects that increase the accessibility of synthetic biology. These might include kits such as Genomikon, or equipment hacks such as the Open PCR. We especially want to encourage teams that may not be able to conduct genetic engineering experiments within their labs due to local regulations, but who might innovate in the areas of equipment, software, outreach, education, etc...
3. Best Entrepreneurship Project: Entrepreneurship in iGEM is about fostering the development of a new industry where Synthetic Biology is the underlying technological platform. As with any new industry, it is not clear which business plans will be the most successful. But, there are also more fundamental questions: What Business models will succeed, how will intellectual property affect company formation and funding, what skills are required at each stage of company’s life cycle, how will government policies promote or hinder new companies, what will be the social contract with Synthetic Biology companies?
4. Best Measurement Project: With all the instruments in our laboratories, why isn't measurement a solved problem in synthetic biology? Part of the problem is knowing what to measure and in what context. The iGEM Measurement Track will aim to address some of these problems.
5. Best Microfluidics Project: Microfluidic, or “lab-on-a-chip” technology, is a maturing field of research involving miniaturized systems where fluids are manipulated on the scale of nanoliters and picoliters. With microfluidics it is possible to perform high-throughput biological experiments integrating multiple functions in devices no larger than a postage stamp.
6. Best Policy and Practices Project: In previous years, iGEM teams that have made significant contributions to integrating broader social considerations into the design of their synthetic biology devices, have been awarded with the Special Prize for Best Human Practices Advance. This year we are introducing a dedicated ‘Policy & Practices’ track for teams looking to contribute detailed work grounded in the humanities and social sciences. The new name of ‘Policy & Practices’ is intended to reflect a broadened and matured vision for activities in this track - and across iGEM as a whole - that has evolved from the strong track record of Human Practices at iGEM.
7. Best Software Project: Computers have been around for a long time. How come we don't have more, great software tools for helping everything engineering synthetic biological systems based on standard biological parts?
   See the Software Track Page for details.
   

Cross-Track Prizes

Awards as they relate to the new tracks in 2014 are taking on a new dimension. For example: while you will be able to compete in the Policy and Practices track for the P&P track award, there will also be a Policy and Practices prize available across all tracks.

New Track teams have the same eligibility for awards as all other iGEM teams, pending confirmation from the judging committee. For example, this makes them eligible for (but not limited to) the Best Poster, Best Presentation, Best Wiki, Best New Part (Natural) awards as well as the Undergraduate and Overgraduate BioBrick Trophies.

There are four New Cross-Track prizes that all iGEM teams are eligible to win. These are:

• Art and Design
• Measurement
• Policy and Practices (Formerly Human Practices)
• Software

This allows us to reward teams who do excellent work in areas beyond their core track. If you make an excellent piece of software, for example, you will now be able to select your team for the software prize, even if you're not in the software track. Another way to explain this is the awards cover the depth of work in the tracks, while the prizes cover the breadth of all tracks in the competition. This new mechanism allows us to reward more great work by iGEM teams. The graphic below shows award and prize eligibility in more detail:

Please send us any comments or suggestions for awards and judging by email to the judging committee at judging AT igem DOT org.