Team:FAU Erlangen/Tour14

Research is fun, but it is more than just lab work. Communication is a very important part in science. iGEM focuses especially on cooperations and collaborations of different teams all over the world. We met a lot of new interesting people during our iGEM time and hopefully we will stay in contact after the conference.

Meetup in Marburg (15/07/31-15/08/02)

Team Marburg invited all German iGEM teams for a meetup in their little city. After the arrival and the erection of our tents on a camping site, we split up into little groups containing one member of each team. In these groups we explored Marburg and started to connect. The next day started with the official part when every team introduced themselves and presented their interesting projects. We were pleasantly surprised that every team was very helpful and friendly – they all offered help and gave tips in their main areas. Afterwards, the fun part started when we took part in a friendly canoe race on the Lahn. The great day ended with a barbecue followed by dancing in a rented club. All in all, the weekend helped to establish many new contacts and to connect all the participating teams.

Bielefeld - Water Samples (15/07/31-15/08/02)

Bielefeld 2015 is working on extensible biosensors to analyze the water quality and detect contaminations with heavy metals. Therefore they asked other iGEM teams to provide water samples. Based on this we brought them water samples from Erlangen to the Meetup in Marburg, where we met team Bielefeld.

Darmstadt - Labsurfing (15/08/21-15/08/22)

During the beta test of the Labsurfing concept of team Darmstadt our team played host for the three team members Laurin, Thomas and Fabian as last stop in their south tour. We showed them our nice city and introduced them to our local franconian cuisine. The next day was less fun, more work. We presented each other the progress of our projects since the Meetup in Marburg. Afterwards we participated in their study to help improve the Labsufing website and of course we all registered there.

Marburg - Human Practice

During the meetup we especially connected with Team Marburg. Tresor came up with the idea of a human practice collaboration with our team. We wanted to create a board game for children to introduce them to science. Therefore Filip, Frederike, Nadine and Sabrina visited Marburg (15/08/15-15/08/16) where we thought of the basic concept of „Game of Cells“. Afterwards team Erlangen was responsible for the biological content and the informative texts, while Marburg designed the game. To test the game, Tresor came to Erlangen (15/09/06-15/09/08) where we played the game and improved it.

Aix-Marseille University - Chewing-gum Survey

The team of Marseille asked us to participate in their survey about chewing gum and GMOs (genetically modified organisms). Three team members joined in the survey to help them in gaining statistically relevant results.