Meetings

Weekly meetings

Since the 20^th of February we had weekly meetings on Monday with everybody from the team including the supervisors. In these meetings we discussed the progress of each person's work, the tasks for the upcoming week and also the results. Since not everyone was following what everyone was doing, the meetings were a good opportunity to catch up and discuss all together.

Group leader meetings

During the development of our project we had four meetings with the group leaders of the Biotechnology Center of the TU Dresden (BIOTEC). These meetings take place the first Monday of every month. The first one we attended focused on the idea we wanted to realize. The leaders helped us to think about difficulties we could face and gave valuable impulses. In the second one we presented our finance plan and they confirmed their support for an iGEM team. The third and fourth meeting were used to present the progress of our project as well as to check the finances. To sum up, we got input from diverse groups in the BIOTEC concerning both technical issues and ways to fund our group. This helped us to illuminate the project idea from numerous points of view.

Meetings with iGEM veterans

A very special opportunity for us was to meet Robert Braun, Prof. Thomas Mascher and his PhD student Julia Bartels: three iGEM veterans from the TU Bielefeld and the LMU Munich, respectively. As soon as they heard that there was an iGEM team in Dresden for the first time since many years, they contacted us and we met with them. They did not only inform us about their experiences, their work and the competition, but they gave us valuable information to fit the iGEM requirements and standards. The meetings led us to reorganize the project and make it more realistic for the competition. After these discussions we could renew our courage and we could contact them any time we needed help and advice.

Meetings with companies

In order to get sponsors and economical support from the scientific community in Dresden, we had to send several (hundreds) of e-mails and meet representatives of companies. One of the companies we met twice was Biosaxony, located in the same building as the BIOTEC. In these meetings Bo and Bastian explained our project and goals to the representatives and we got valuable feedback from them on how to improve our project and make it more attractive to other companies. Since it was not possible for them to directly support us, they gave us several contacts from other companies and sectors.

Bonding Firmenkontaktmesse

On the 28^th and 29^th the bonding Firmenkontaktmesse took place in Dresden. In this fair several companies from different fields present career opportunities and information about themselves. Two different members of the group attended the fair on both days: Bo and Bastian were there during the first day, and Marvin and Ashwin on the second. Our team members tried to approach the representatives of the companies and ask for their advice and support, but the success was quite limited.