From the 25^th to the 27^th July 2014 three Swedish university iGEM teams (Linköping, Uppsala, and Chalmers) gathered at Linköping University for a joint Meet-Up which was initiated and planned by the LiU iGEM 2014 Team. The teams officially presented their projects for each other and participated in an Ethics and Collaboration Workshop. The workshop was divided into three parts:

• A discussion about Collaboration and how the current Swedish iGEM Teams can jointly create a support network to aid in the establishment of new Swedish iGEM teams
• A discussion about what direction the field of Synthetic Biology will take in the next 10 and 20 years, and how to foster an interest for Synthetic Biology amongst young people and the general public
• A discussion about the more problematic sides of Synthetic Biology, namely accidental release into the environment, patenting of synthetic organisms, and how these issues should be approached

The Meet-Up Weekend was deemed successful and all participating teams look forward to many years of future collaboration! The Ethics Discussion was summarized by LiU iGEM 2014 and is available to read in the PDF below.

We were contacted by Manchester University’s iGEM 2014 team for collaboration, which we gladly accepted! Our team filled out a survey relating to obesity which helped Manchester’s team to proceed with their project.