This year, we have carried out several collaborations with other iGEMers.
We invited Paris Bettencourt iGEM team for Turgut Özal University International Medicine Students Congress to present their wonderful project of 2013. As a part of collaboration, together, we performed a SynBio workshop titled “SynBio 4 All” to engage with the medical students coming all over the country and world and to present the features of synthetic biology and iGEM.
Annually, the medical faculty of our university organizes the biggest and the most qualified medical student congress in Turkey with the highest attendance. By last year, over 1,500 medical students and experts attended our congress to present, learn and discuss new researches and treatments in medical field. Medical students all over Turkey join and present their scientific work which has been achieved throughout the year. Another fact is the international nature of this congress that experts, scientists and attendants from other countries have enriched the content and atmosphere of the congress. The impact on media and public opinion takes place in news and TV channels. The organization, design, coordination and configuration of scientific program of the whole event are carried out by the medical students of our university with the help of supervisors which is a success by itself.
Researches and scientific works performed by students compose the main portion of the event. Last year, 115 oral presentation and 75 posters have taken place in our congress. The topics and scientific background of these projects are also popular and promising features which may pose a great role in the future. For instance, “CRISPR/Cas9 system”; its utilities, possible applications, especially on tuberculosis infection, “tissue engineering” and its novel approaches, the-state-of-art method for “treating colon cancer by using synthetic gut flora” are a few studies from last year’s scientific program. Regarding these topics, the potential impact and attribution of our congress to the scientific society will be understood better. However, there is still a need of support to ease the procedure of converting these studies of students into scientific articles. This is very important to train qualified, skillful and experienced scientists and experts of the field. The encouragement to study and perform such works and researches will be also boosted if this support is conducted.
Another we collaborated was with METU-Turkey. We invited them to our faculty for dinner and presentation session as a part of iGEM Team Meet-up in Turkey. We discussed our project ideas and agreed on to intense our collaboration further. Afterwards, we helped the by providing genetic materials and iGEM kit plates from past years. In return, METU-Turkey helped us to conduct a significant modelling study.
Lastly, we did mentoring to AUC Turkey iGEM High School team this year which ended up with a successful year.
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