Team:CSU Fort Collins/Collaborations

Collaborations


The Colorado iGEM teams met up at Colorado State University to present their projects.


Colorado iGEM Meetup

On August 30th, Colorado State University’s iGEM team held a meetup with University of Colorado-Boulder’s iGEM team. For the past 2 years the teams have collaborated by testing each other’s parts, which proved difficult this year due to project complexity. Instead, we decided to hold a meet up this year. CU-Boulder traveled to CSU and the teams each presented their projects. Both teams were able to receive feedback on their presentations from people who had never heard it before. The meet up also gave the teams the opportunity to make meet new people, develop useful relationships with fellow scientists, and learn about the other team’s work on a personal level.

CSU iGEM also invited Dr. Jeff Kasser, professor of philosophy at CSU, as a guest speaker. He spoke to the teams about the philosophy of science and biology. Kasser dicussed whether there was a way to distinguish science from pseudo-science, discussed laws of nature, and the reduction of one science to another (e.g. is psychology really just a sub-science of biology). Both teams and Wade Troxell, mayor of the city of Fort Collins, discussed with Dr. Kasser genetic engineering and the public perception of genetically modified organisms. The talk incited conversation and thoughts around the responsibilities and standards that synthetic biologists do and should hold themselves to.

Other Collaborations

Our team also participated in upwards of 15 surveys, and added our team and project to Paris-Bettencourt's iGEM Rhizi. This year, we also participated in the 2015 Interlab Study, including the extra credit.