Global Policy Mapping Hackathon

The global synthetic biology and biotechnology landscape is often confusing and hard to navigate. It can be difficult to know what the policy is in your country and it is especially difficult to know how policies compare between countries. Currently, there is no central resource that tracks global policies in this space. The global policy mapping hackathon aimed to enable the iGEM Community to create a policy resource for the entire Synthetic Biology community. In the true iGEM spirit, we used a competition format to motivate participants to explore this important issue. Over the course of one weekend, participants formed research teams. The teams that entered the most complete policies won prizes!

The hackathon focused on global shipping policies for biological materials. This issue is important to the iGEM Community, because it is what allows us to share biological parts and DNA that are critical to Synthetic Biology research. We have teamed up with members from Open Science & Accessibility to answer this question, because equitable shipping practices are a backbone of open and accessible science. See also The Shipping Policies Project.

Goals

Produce a whitepaper mapping import/export policies in a specific country or region * Have a chance to present what you learn before a panel of judges * Hear expert talks on subjects like “How Policy Affects Parts”, “Shipping Stories” and “Policy Careers for Scientists” * Enjoy mentorship from the Governance and Policy Network

Outcomes

We were to compile an open access database mapping shipping policies of more than 5 countries and 3 regional and global policies. The database is a set of 6 whitepaper solution proposals. These overview local and global policies and propose a solution to improve shipping.