Student teams design, build and test their own genetically engineered system, before travelling to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to present their results and meet the other teams. Examples of previous projects include bacteria that can detect land mines, degrade plastics or produce biofuels, a bacteriophage that specifically targets and destroys tuberculosis germs, and engineered yeast that produce flavoured "SynBio" beer.

For this, we are recruiting a team of second year students to represent Warwick at MIT (we already started to circulate an announcement today). The project is multidisciplinary, bringing together disciplines such as biology, physics, engineering and the study of human aspects. We are, therefore, recruiting a cross-disciplinary team of biologists, engineers, chemists, physicists, mathematicians, sociologists, philosophers, economists (applications are welcome from all degrees) to develop projects that could even have the potential to change the world (e.g. addressing Global Research Priorities).

Students will experimentally work on the project over the summer, and present their results in Boston on 30 October to 3 November. A stipend will be provided to support students during their work.

Further Information

If you are interested in participating as instructor, adviser, or just observer, please email Alfonso dot Jaramillo at warwick dot ac dot uk . There is no commitment on your side. In addition to the interaction with talented and curious students, I am convinced that it is a fantastic way of interacting with other faculty and sometimes starting new cross-faculty collaborations.

For more information about iGEM, you can check out their website and you can browse examples of previous projects from teams.