On June 19th 2014, the Oxford iGEM team invited all of the teams in the UK and Ireland to talks in the Oxford University Biochemistry Department, including a talk by the CEO of iGEM Randy Rettberg; 'Synthetic Biology - Short Past and Long Future'. The event was attended by 15 iGEM teams as well as Oxford University undergraduates and postgraduates. We would like to thank Randy Rettberg, Dr. Richard Kelwick and Dr. Jarek Bryk for their insightful and entertaining talks. Later in the afternoon came the first opportunity for the the UK and Irish teams to get to know each other, initially by chatting over sandwiches before moving out of the department to the less formal setting of the pub. Our thanks to all those who attended and we hope this is the start of many successful team collaborations to come! Thank you also to The Oxford Society for Synthetic Biology (SynOx)for their help in co-organising the event.
Speakers
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.
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