General Requirements

All iGEM teams must meet the following requirements to participate in the 2015 competition. Additional requirements specific to New Track teams are listed in the section below.

1. Team Composition:

   iGEM teams consist primarily of undergraduate students at an accredited college or university. The team must be supervised by at least two instructors one of whom must be a faculty member. Both instructors must serve as primary contacts and are responsible for the official registration of the team, the team roster, certifying the safety form, and payment of team fees. Graduate students, postdocs, and others are welcome as team advisors on undergraduate teams.

   The iGEM competition is welcoming and fun for all students regardless of gender or orientation.
   More information can be found in the Gender balance page.

2. Team Structure:

   One team pays one registration fee, has one presentation at the Jamboree, one poster, and is eligible for one set of prizes. Several schools may combine to form a team and a school may have several teams. In particular, it is normal for a school to have both Software and Wetware teams.

3. Registration and Other Fees:

   • Team registration: A TBD USD team registration fee is required for each team.
   • Giant Jamboree attendance fees: attendance fees for the Giant Jamboree in Boston are TBD per attendee.
   • For more information about fees see the team registration fee page and attendance fee page.

4. Project Documentation:

   The team's project must be documented on the iGEM Wiki, the parts used in their project must be documented in the Registry. You have the freedom to be creative, but a few specific rules apply. See the wiki requirements page.

5. Part Submission:

   Your submissions are needed to make the Registry better each year. Teams are required to provide their parts as:
   • BioBrick-compatible (RFC10) biological parts in a standard BioBrick shipping plasmid pSB1C3, and as
   • High-quality documentation in the iGEM Registry.
   The physical DNA must be received by the Registry by the deadline. Be sure you understand the requirements before submitting your DNA. See the Registry DNA submission instructions. Parts must be Released in order to be considered by the judges.

6. Attribution:

   The description of each project must clearly attribute work done by the Students and distinguish it from work done by others, including host labs, Advisors, Instructors, technicians, sponsors, professional website designers, artists, and commercial services. Please see the iGEM 2011 Imperial College Acknowledgements page for an example.

7. Safety:

   Teams are required to complete the About Our Lab form, the Safety Form, and Check-Ins. The team PI (principal investigator) is responsible for attesting to the validity of the Safety Form contents and for submitting the form. See the Safety for details and applicable deadlines.

8. Project Presentation:

   All team members are encouraged to attend the Giant Jamboree in September 2015. Each team will give a 20 minute presentation and present a poster of their project. Oral and poster presentations must be given by the students. Please read over the poster judging guidelines for more information on how we are assessing the posters; formatting requirements and expected poster components are also specified here. Final pdf files of the posters must be submitted to iGEM HQ before or during the Jamboree weekend.

9. Positive Contribution:

   All participants are required to work hard to build positive contributions to society and have lots of fun!

New Track Requirements

1. Art and Design:

   Art and Design teams, please see the Art and Design page. In addition the the general requirements for all iGEM teams listed above, Art and Design teams are required to complete the following:

   • Team Composition While iGEM is primarily a student competition, we acknowledge that there may be artists and designers who are interested in participating and who do not have a university affiliation. We strongly recommend that artists interested in participating with a team or forming their own iGEM team find team members and advisors from local universities or community labs. This is an experimental track, so please contact us at artdesign AT igem.org with any questions or concerns about participation and team requirements.
   • Project Presentation: Each team must give a twenty minute presentation discussing their project at the Jamboree, including description of goals, process, and outcomes. In addition, teams must present a poster during the Jamboree poster sessions. Please feel free to bring any additional materials that support the presentation of your projects. Special presentation requirements (e.g. video screening, installations) can be arranged on a case by case basis (deadline for special requests: TBD). Please contact artdesign AT igem.org with questions.
   • BioBrick Parts:Teams participating in the Art and Design tracks are strongly encouraged to work with the materials of synthetic biology, including BioBrick parts, although it is not a strict requirement. To receive a distribution copy of the parts registry, teams must request one from artdesign AT igem.org and have an affiliated university or community laboratory and follow all safety regulations. Teams that do wish to use and submit a new part must adhere to safety and iGEM submission guidelines.

2. Community Labs:

   Community Lab teams please see the Community Labs New Track page . In addition the the general requirements for all iGEM teams listed above, Community Lab teams are required to complete the following:

   • Team composition. While there is no minimum number of team members, iGEM is a team competition and single individual entries will not be accepted. CL teams must have two advisors, one of which must be in the field of their chosen subject area.
   • Community Lab teams must demonstrate they have access to a BL 1 lab in order to receive a copy of the distribution.
   • Teams participating in the hardware aspect of the CL track are encouraged to bring their equipment to the Giant Jamboree. Teams may not bring live or inactive organisms as part of their equipment. This topic will be covered in more detail when evaluation criteria and awards are published.

   As Community Lab teams are not operating within the framework offered by academic institutions, they must meet the following additional requirements:

   1. CL teams must be an incorporated entity (for profit or not-for-profit).
   2. CL teams must have a legal entity that has the ability to sign contracts.

3. Measurement:

   Measurement teams, please see the Measurement New Track page. In addition the the general requirements for all iGEM teams listed above, Measurement teams are required to complete the following:

   • Interlab Measurement Study: For the Measurement Track, it is also important to submit data taken for the Interlab Study. Data should be uploaded to the iGEM interlab measurement site, along with accompanying metrology worksheets. Data will not be considered if it is uploaded without an accompanying worksheet or if the worksheet does not give consent for inclusion of the data in the interlab study.
   • Software Submission: If your team's entry includes the development of new software, you must make your software tools available as open source projects on the iGEM servers, per the requirements on the Software requirements page.
   • Developing your iGEM Policy & Practices Team:
     • Faculty Advisors: Each team must work with at least two senior mentors. One of the senior mentors must be a faculty member. One mentor should be based in the humanities or social sciences (for example, law, economics, sociology, public policy), and one from any other discipline including, but not limited to, science, engineering, social sciences, medicine, and law. Additional faculty members may also be listed as faculty advisors. One faculty member must be designated as the primary faculty advisor. She or he is ultimately responsible for the official registration of the team, the team roster, and payment of team fees.
     • Advisors: In addition to the required roles above, teams are encouraged to recruit non-faculty advisors. These can include postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers, as well as current or former policymakers, government officials, legal advisors, entrepreneurs, or members of non-governmental organizations, regulatory agencies or funding bodies.
     • Questions? This is an experimental track, so please contact us at policypractices AT igem.org if you have any questions or concerns about participation and team requirements.
   • Project Submissions:

     Team submissions are required to convey (1) the project inspiration, (2) clearly articulated question(s) the project proposes to address, (3) detailed method(s) used (and their assumptions), (4) discussion of the challenges encountered in pursuing this work, (5) an explanation of who the project findings should be of interest to and why, and (6) an explanation of how the approach(es) might be adapted and scaled for others to use.

     These questions should be addressed in the following ways, in addition to the standard wiki, poster and presentation requirements for all iGEM teams. [Please note that these requirements are subject to revision until medal criteria are announced]:

     • A 2-page executive summary (that can reference additional resources on your wiki)
     • A 3-minute video that is accessible to an interested lay audience
     • any other formats you think can help iGEM teams and the broader community understand and interact with your work. This could be anything from an educational handbook, a software tool, a report, or a policy brief. We encourage you to be creative and to think about platforms that can be broadly shared and adapted.
   • Parts: Teams in the policy & practices division will not receive a copy of the 2015 distribution. They are not required to perform wet-lab work or to deposit new BioBricks in the Registry. Teams that do wish to receive a distribution copy of the parts registry must request one from policypractices AT igem.org, and be affiliated with a university or community laboratory. Teams that do wish to use and submit a new part must adhere to safety and iGEM submission guidelines.

4. Software:

   Software teams are not be required to contribute parts to the Registry (but instead are expected to contribute to the GitHub software repository). Key requirements for software teams are:

   End User Documentation

   Core requirements are:

   • Wiki documentation of project aims, methods and success -- in line with the general iGEM requirements
   • Detailed installation or setup instructions (if applicable)
   • An well-designed User Guide explaining how to use of your program or tool
   Re-Use and Best software development practices

   Core requirements are:

   • submission of your complete source code and any auxiliary files to the iGEM github repository
   • Use git versioninig from the start of your project so that the commit history is / will be available on github
   • Comprehensive code documentation for outside developers

   Highly recommended:

   • more than one realistic test case
   • automated unit tests, documentation of test coverage
   • API documentation, preferably automatically built from source code documentation

   Bonus points for:

   • use of SBOL and other standards
   • re-use and further development of previous iGEM software projects (or parts thereof)
   • use and/or improvement of existing synthetic biology tools or frameworks
   • development of well documented libraries for other developers rather than "only" stand-alone Apps for end users
   Relevance and Validation

   Core requirement:

   • Demonstrate the relevance of your development for Synthetic Biolgy
   Highly recommended:
   • Devise an experimental test for your program/algorithm/work flow
   The experimental validation of software/computational projects is not expected to result in a super fancy engineering project. Instead we would like to see simple and straightforward experiments (for example: gene synthesis, expression, fluorescence of x constructs) which can be delegated to external labs or collaborating teams. iGEM/software will try to support teams who want to outsource experimental testing to academic or commercial labs. Details will follow.