iGEM Community joined the Global Community Bio Summit 5.0 (GCBS 5.0). During the event, community members organised three sessions for Governance and Policy, Synbio Alliance and Open Science and Accessibility.
- Event Date: November 18th-20th, 2021
- iGEM Representatives: Cibele Zolnier, Jose Garza Martinez, Estefany Sofia Sánchez Martínez, Deborah Schafhauser, Heng (Annika) Shi, Jaume Puig, Tejas Borkar, Nannan Jiang, Maria Jose Duran and Luiza Hesketh.
The Global Community BioSummit ↗ is an event organized by the MIT Media Lab’s Community Biotechnology Initiative which creates a space for the global community of DIY biologists, community biologists, biohackers, biomakers, and members of independent and community laboratories to convene, plan, build fellowship, and continue the evolution of community Biology.
The iGEM Community is resource-rich space for iGEMers (and anyone interested in synthetic biology) to team up, and collaboratively build assets for the synbio ecosystem, while growing into future leaders of the field. Our community members have gone through a shared experience of the iGEM competition and have gone on to play a pivotal role in not just developing the field of synthetic biology but also bringing accessibility to technologies of biology and their education throughout the world.
Biosummit and iGEM both share a community of members who are actively working on understanding issues to the accessibility of technologies and finding solutions to enable the access to science.
iGEM Community Sessions
Biology Across Borders: Hacking Our Way Through Slow Shipping Policies
When biology is shipped across borders, things get messy. In most of the world, access to plasmids, microbes, and other biological materials is not just a matter of submitting an AddGene order and waiting a week. Instead, orders are often held at the border for months, and are sometimes even destroyed by customs agents! What can we do?
This session was a conversation with contributors from iGEM Community, who recently held a hackathon to map global shipping policies, and leaders from Scintia, who are getting ready to ship free plasmids around Latin America (in exchange for information on the shipping process).
Organizers
Fostering Local SynBio Communities
How is the synthetic biology community around the globe? Many SynBio Associations are making an impact and contributing to the advancement of synthetic biology on local and regional levels. At the Global Alliance of SynBio Associations (SynBio Alliance), we aim to connect, recognize and celebrate these organizations on a global scale.
In this panel discussion, we gathered associations from different regions to discover and discuss the scenario of synthetic biology worldwide and how different communities are being connected. We had representatives from SynBio Brasil, Synchrony Egypt, SynBio Indonesia, and OMIC-Engine, from Greece.
Organizers
Translating Our Way to a Common Language
Synthetic Biology should be developed everywhere by everyone. Yet, how can we talk about “synthetic biology” all around the world when most scientific information is still developed and shared only in English? The iGEM Open Science and Accessibility Steering Group (OScA) launched the Translation Initiative to support a more inclusive community, where language is a bridge and not a barrier. We aim to create a shared vocabulary concerning synthetic biology that is translated into different languages.
At this workshop, we will share with you some of our perspectives and challenges, and immerse you in a multilingual presentation about synthetic biology. From English to Portuguese, Spanish, Mandarin, and many others join us as we translate our way to a common language.
Organizers
Apart from these activities many of our iGEM alumni shared the work they have been doing after the competition in fields of synthetic biology, bioarts, biosafety and science communication. If you want to share your story with the rest of the iGEM Community then reach out to us at community@igem.org.