Team:Marburg/Meetup
Germany’s biggest MeetUp of young Synthetic Biology
The first weekend in August, we hosted the biggest MeetUp of young Synthetic Biology in Germany. At this event, we did not only talk about science but also performed some sporting activities which was a canoe race at the Lahn, the Marburg’s river. Through this event, several collaborations between different iGEM teams came into being.
Altogether, 9 teams participated including the ones from Aachen, Bielefeld, Bonn, Darmstadt, Erlangen, Freiburg, Goettingen, Tuebingen and us with overall 60 students of different fields of study. Represented were among others biologists, chemists, engineers, computer scientists, physicists as well as social and media scientists.
At the beginning of this event on Friday evening, we mixed the team members and formed small groups of about 8 people and walked through the Oberstadt – Marburg’s city center – where we had dinner in one of the 126 bars.
Saturday morning, we met at the old university building where we were greeted by our supervisor Gert Bange, the director of the LOEWE center for synthetic microbiology Bruno Eckhardt and the coordinator of the international Max-Planch research school Wiebke Wlotzka. Afterwards, every team got the opportunity to present their own project, talk about their arisen problems and exchange experiences to solve them.
In the afternoon, we went to the stairs in front of Marburg’s university canteen at the Lahn and performed several canoe races. Three members of every team competed against the other teams. The final winner was the team from TU Darmstadt in a head-to-head race against team Aachen.
During a barbecue, many discussions about possible improvements and applications for the earlier presented projects arose. In the evening, a celebration was hosted in the inner city. The event was ended with a collective breakfast at the camping site where most of the participants stayed the night.
Overall, the weekend was a really exciting experience for our team and we are looking forward to repeating it in the next year.
