Conference of China iGEMer Committee(CCiC)
From August 14th to 15th, Conference of China iGEMer Committee (CCiC) was held in the School of Life Sciences, Peking University. 34 teams from all over China accepted our invitation, a markedly increase in the number as well as the kind of teams compared with the 1st CCIC held by HZAU, 2014. More than 300 iGEMers have attended this year’s conference.
In the opening ceremony on August 14th, we invited two special guests, ZHANG Haoqian and LI Teng to give the keynote speech. Both of them are co-founders of BluePHA, an iGEM startup in China. More importantly, they are also the team leaders of Peking and Tsinghua iGEM 2010 team respectively. As predecessors in synthetic biology field, they shared their iGEM experiences, along with their opinions on the prospects of synthetic biology. Furthermore, they encouraged young scholars to study deeply in this area and fight for great achievements in the future.
ZHANG Haoqian
Former leader of Peking iGEM 2010
Co-founder of BluePHA
LI Teng
Former leader of Tsinghua iGEM 2010
Co-founder of BluePHA
CCIC Peking 2015 seeks to establish a sustained platform for Chinese iGEM teams to communicate with each other.
With excellent and attractive presentation, all the teams get numerous responses from others, including suggestions on the thought of experiments, heated discussions on path design, and reflections on safety and application. All teams’posters were exhibited in the hall, to facilitate the idea exchange of participants in an open environment. In the tea break, team members could present their projects to other participants who had an interest, and this has aroused passionate discussions among them. Problems and solutions on experiments can be easily shared in front of a poster, with data and diagrams showed on it.
Modern technology makes information acquisition more convenient, but there is no other way better than face-to-face communication. The conference provided teams with an opportunity to learn about each other. Meaningful exchanges in ideas enhanced the efficiency of problem solving. That’s why we tried our best to make a relaxing and pleasure atmosphere for participants, by providing delicious snacks and conference meals.
Attendance of CCIC helped all the teams acquire both reflections and inspiration from communicating, and improved the projects in the end. All in all, we believe that the conference will make a significant improvement for all CCiC attendees in the Giant Jamboree.
Communications
In addition to the Conference of China iGEMer held by Peking iGEM Team, we also attempted to communicate with other teams by various kinds of activities.
In April of 2015, the iGEM team of Ocean University of China (OUC) came to Peking University to take part in our discussions. At that time, both teams of PKU and OUC just had the core ideas of the project, with many details to be considered. Through the presentation of our idea and the brain storming, their participation has brought us some new ideas.
From May 16th to 17th, ZHANG Haoqian, our team instructor, visited Zhejiang University and gave their iGEM team members a speech about his insights into iGEM. As a predecessor, he shared his iGEM experience with the new iGEM team of Zhengjiang University. The subsequent academic exchange between Zhang and the whole team has brought the talks to an end. Besides, having been invited as an instructor for the iGEM teams of several high schools in Hangzhou, he came to Hangzhou Technological Museum to provide theoretical and experimental references for them.