About
iGEM can’t anticipate every challenge a team might encounter. During an iGEM project, you'll have to make some of your own decisions about what benefits your values and what risks you're willing to take. The right answer might not be obvious― but we can do better thinking as a community than alone! So: let's do some thinking together in the Values & Risks workshops. These are interactive 90-minute workshops hosted by iGEM Ambassadors to explore issues of responsibility, safety, security, and ethics with current-year iGEM teams. By the end of the workshop, teams should understand more about the risks in their projects, know where to go for further information on different risks, and be confident they have the tools they need to manage them effectively.
Ambassadors are trained by iGEM's Responsibility Program and workshops are offered in many iGEM languages. In 2021, together with the Translation Initiative from Open Science & Accessibility, the ambassadors worked on translating the workshop's material into some of these languages ; namely Spanish, French, and Mandarin.
Why attend a workshop?
- Improve your projects by better anticipating their benefits and risks
- Learn how to follow iGEM's (mandatory!) safety rules and policies
- Make sure your initial safety form gets approved at the end of June
- Discuss how to responsibly deal with controversial project topics
- Strengthen your interviews, surveys, and other Human Practices work
Learn more about the outcomes of the workshops over the years on the Responsibility Program website