IGEM:MIT/Fundraising/Alumni Association fund

iGEM, the International Genetically Engineered Machines contest is a summer competition for teams of undergraduates to engineer a biological machine. The educational goal of this competition is to get undergraduates excited about biological engineering and teach them how to responsibly engineer biology. The competition, started at MIT, will have 39 participating schools from around the world in this, its third summer.

We are looking for support to help the MIT team win this prestigous competition for the first time. We need to support a team of 6 undergraduates for the summer as well as cover the costs of materials, in particular DNA synthesis. We expect the total costs incurred over the summer to total $40,000. We are appealing to MIT alumni to help defray these costs to give the MIT undergraduate team the best possible chance to succeed against stiff competition from within and outside the US.

Funds will be administered through the lab of Prof. Drew Endy at Course 20 (Biological Engineering) and Tom Knight at CSAIL.