Team:GenetiX Tec CCM/Collaborations
As an iGEM member, every team goes through a different development process: a route full of ups and downs. Latin America MeetUp was the perfect opportunity to share these experiences, learn from them and even to come up with great new ideas. Since we were hosts, GenetiX team was in charge of preparing activities that allowed not only the interchange of adventures and discoveries, but also learning new and useful things for the competition.
The event began with some getting-to-know-each-other activities. Inter team bonding is crucial when building cooperation. The next step was one of the most important ones: explain our projects, challenges and achievements, so that we could receive feedback from our peers and experts, who visited us as a part of the experience.
We were witnesses of different lectures with scientists from the “Instituto Nacional de Rehabilitación” (spanish for National Institute of Rehabilitation). We learned about their research projects and how professional laboratories work. This showed us that science in the outside world (as a job, more than leisure) is not so different from what we do. In addition, it fed our passion about what we love.
During these day, we also met experts that taught us crucial ideas for the complete development of science. One of them talked about mathematical models in biology and the other, about science marketing. These both completed our work and oriented the teams in terms of fund-raising.
The MeetUp was one-in-a-million experience. We had fun and met new people, who were facing similar challenges as ours. We had the occasion to grow as a team as we learned about our project and receive feedback from people who knew the field. Most important, we finally established the bond between our region teams that had never been created before, opening the window for further cooperative projects.