Collaboration

We contacted iGEM teams based in the University of York and Edinburgh University and set up Skype interviews. During these interviews we were involved in discussions over Policy & Practices, paying particular attention to team structure. This was in order to help ourselves better understand the possible roles and responsibilities that different hierarchies would require. Furthermore, we questioned each of them on their approach to modelling their systems.

We also held discussions with the iGEM team from Universidad de los Andes in Columbia. This gave us an insight into how our fellow students from the Americas were proceeding and what obstacles were facing them. We covered topics such as sensitivity analysis, estimating parameters in modelling, and how best to maximise efficiency given various budgets. Further, we discussed ventures that would be mutually beneficial to our teams. Amongst the many suggestions the one that particularly stood out was for them to send their model to us and then we would then run it on a supercomputer on their behalf. In turn they would allow us the opportunity to look over their work and see whether we could glean any ideas which could lead to improvements regarding our project.

Surveys were created and sent out to universities around the world. We in turn completed the surveys of iGEM teams across Europe and both North and South America. Following this we were contacted by the team from MIT, with whom we discussed the possibility of using our system as a delivery mechanism for their creation.

We communicated with teams from Hokkaido University and The University of Manchester providing assistance with modelling using MATLAB as well as gaining feedback on a program to analyse data produced by our Tecan.

The iGEM team from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill contacted us, and we realised they were planning a project similar to the one we had decided on. The potential of this was not lost on us, and we eagerly replied as communication between our teams seemed like a particularly beneficial recourse. The similarity of our projects allowed us to share a lot of information, the focus of which was on the modelling aspect.