IGEM:IMPERIAL/2006/Calendar/2006-7-26

A visit to Cambridge - iGEM teams from the UK meet to share their experience - (26 July 2006)


On a hot and sunny day, the I.CoLi team met early in the morning at King's Cross Station, London. You might wonder about the destination: CAMBRIDGE. On 24/25 July 2006, Cambridge University hosted the first UK iGEM meeting. The teams from Edinburgh and Imperial College visited Cambridge and all three iGEM teams exchanged their experience and ideas from the first weeks as well as taking part in a "mystery challenge" ...

Shortly before lunch, the I.CoLi team met with the Cambridge team and after being shown through the Wetlabs at Cambridge, both teams had a picnic together outside. Instantly, everyone got caught up in talks and so time flew by until the arrival of the team from Edinburgh (whose train unfortunately broke down half-way during their journey). To get to know more about the different projects each team was working on, presentations were given, followed by short discussions. It was very interesting to see that on the one hand, a common structure could be seen in all team's approaches to their particular idea but on the other hand, the ways of handling a problem or distribution of tasks/organization within a team could differ remarkably.

As a special highlight of the day, iGEM instructors prepared a "mystery challenge": The task for this challenge was to build a boat in 60min. - the fastest boat crossing the river would win! After an hour of intensive work, 5 brilliant boats were ready to go! Despite the promising-looking designs none of the boats succeeded in crossing the river in the end. The best boat, however, went a significant distance along the river (against the currents!) but was never seen again.

The eventful day ended with a cheerful dinner in the city of Cambridge.

A big thanks to Cambridge for hosting the UK iGEM meeting and making it a memorable iGEM day!