Teams said that most of the activities were carried out through collaborative work, and different team members are in charge of specific activities, i.e. elaborating the judging form, human practices activities, making the team deliverables, graphic design, theoretical research, elaboration of the wiki, math modeling, and experiment design. However, some other team members carried out all the administrative activities.

Since they took courses in synthetic biology, math, human practices, biosecurity, and how to organize a project, they developed skills in those areas. Also, they said they developed skills that could help them be better considered in college, such as laboratory techniques, the usage of equipment, and the ability of reading and analyze research papers.

Most teams are organized by committees with very specific roles. However, some of them do not feel that they develop a complete experience since some members focus on very specific activities and team leaders are the ones who end up doing most of the work. To deal with this, they have developed strategies like workshops for team members so they can get more involved in all the activities of the project and also learn how to better organize their time to fulfill their activities.

Since most of the teams do not have people on their affiliations involved with iGEM, external support is very important for them. Some teams have teachers that teach them techniques and theoretical concepts, while others keep in touch with expert professors from different areas of the universities with which they collaborated, or from universities that host them at their facilities. In the case of teams that have participated before on iGEM, team members receive support from graduated iGEM alumni.

They feel their knowledge in those areas is very limited; hence, they need to watch videos, connect with other teams, or read other teams’ wikis. In some cases, they have summer camps conducted by mentors who have consistently participated in iGEM to prepare teams to make experiments, covering the use of proper equipment, disposition of materials, and identification and management of work areas.

For our younger iGEMers, learning about how things happen in the real world and in industry and how synthetic biology can solve problems in society is one of the most valuable experiences they had, along with the opportunity to meet people who share the same interests and professionals in the area and make a better community between different highschools. In general, they mentioned that by getting involved in laboratory work and the development of an interdisciplinary project they were able to develop those skills that would be very difficult to learn elsewhere, although science is not very accessible and synthetic biology is not either.

To overcome the challenges they faced, we asked teams their needs and expectations regarding resources. They mentioned they expected to have resources to learn about basic synbio concepts, usage of laboratory materials, DNA, standardization, usage of some platforms, and the registration of standardized parts. They said they would have liked to have introductory courses or educational platforms, however, they said they found Slack a very good tool to ask for help.

Since their high school studies are not focused on synthetic biology, most students are concerned about the lack of knowledge of many of the team members on synthetic biology and other areas such as human practices and biosafety. Besides that, they feel a lot of pressure from their affiliations to maintain the high standard of the team. With these concerns, one year seems a very short period to get all done, as the organization of the team is also something they struggle with.

Among the non-scientific skills team members mentioned they were able to develop different skills, including abilities to collaborate, interact, retain information, raise funds, program the wiki, think critically, and develop mathematical models. In addition, they commented they were able to develop soft skills that are not very common to be taught in their affiliations. Some of those soft skills are the use of the English language (in the cases of teams that it is not its native language), speaking in front of the public, leadership, public speaking, communication skills, and the ability to answer questions. In general, they told us they learned to be more confident and open.

Regarding the expenses involved in the development of an iGEM project, there are different situations a team can face depending on its affiliation. On one hand, some teams mentioned that even though they receive financial support, they need to contact external teachers or advisors to receive help, as people from their institutions have no experience or do not know the competition. On the other hand, there are some affiliations that do not have the budget but do have an interest in having their students participating, hence, they have to look for help in other school’s facilities or collaborate with other teams to get their experimental work done.