User:Macowell/team checkups
From 2007.igem.org
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Bay Area RSI
Andy Mendelsohn - 650.965.1544
- 3:35 12 July
Just got $5000 from avid (one team member friends with son of high-up executive apparently), have been waiting for money to order constructs and pay registration fee (have earmarked $2500 for Jamboree fees & travel). They have an external wiki, so I asked them to put a link up to it on the iGEM07 wiki. Basically they got started in the middle of June and have a deadline for the final design tomorrow, (friday 13). So far they haven't done any wetwork at all. I encouraged them to get going on that.
Berkeley LBL
Connie (Yisheng) Kang - 510.260.7188
- 3:50 12 July
No response; left message to please call back
- 2:29 13 July
No response;
- 2:29 16 July
Spoke with Connie; gave her the lab number and she said she would call back. Not sure if she knows what iGEM is.
- 3:04 18 July
Sent an email to srhconnie@berkeley.edu asking for convenient times to call
Chiba
Daisuke Umeno - Phone number not provided
- 3:50 18 July
sent email requesting times to talk to umeno@faculty.chiba-u.jp
Colombia-Israel
Raul Cuero - 936.261.5011?
Duke
Jingdong Tian - 919.684.3494
- 3:54 12 July
No response; left message to please call back
- 2:30 13 July
No response
- 2:40 16 July
No response
- 3:18 18 July
sent email requesting times to talk to jtian@duke.edu
- 4:03 20 July
Called Faisal Reza at 919.660.8577
three projects, 6 students, 3 undergrad and 3 from high school (school of science & math).
They found videos & powerpoints from last year useful, esp because they show what successful projects are like - provides concrete examples of good final product.
They got started a little later this year (june).
Had IP issue w/ promega. Should they mention they are using material promega has some IP claim to in their part documentation? What happens when a google alert pops up pointing promega to the registry page?
Faisal had lots of questions about our operations and the state of us and the hard-SB crowd; it sounded like he was making notes. He mentioned that last year, they actually took a bit of the dna sent in the two distro plates sent last year and stored it in separate 96 well plates - they used a 96-multichannel robot and wrote some simple software to reinterpret the coordinates of the new wells. Faisal & co. might be thinking about starting their own registry...
ETHZ
Sven Panke - +41 44 632 76 60
- 4:04 12 July
Let it ring several times, then realized it was probably 10:00pm there. Not sure if ETH even has a team this year...
Glasgow
David GILBERT - +44 141 330 2563 / davidgilbertskype
- 4:06 12 July
No response; left message to please call back. Right... it's also probably 9:00pm there.
- 12:58 13 July (via skype)
They essentially started last monday the 2nd. Have some IP concerns but that won't preclude general descriptions online. Nonetheless, they are only just now getting their wiki started. They have a roster but no project description. Spent a week teaching modelers modeling and wet lab kids wet lab stuff, and just taught modeler kids how to do minipreps.
Their summer starts around mid-june and ends in October. They had the impression that team had to be 10 students for only 10 weeks, so they are constraining themselves to that timeline. I mentioned that other schools find ways to have iGEM classes that allow students to continue iGEM work before or after summer, and that there is definitely nothing wrong with going over 10 weeks.
Told having a good wiki is important so judges have projects to evaluate two weeks before Jamboree, but stressed that it's even better for teams to be using and editing it day-to-day to so that the community has a public face, instead of waiting till the last minute to build it.
David noted one general benefit that he hadn't expected: Their lab is located in a pretty serious molecular bio research lab and the students, the modelers at least, have been forging links with other researchers due to watercooloer conversations, i.e. "iGEM student to researcher: oh, you're working on plant mesoderm development... Well, yeah, I know just how to model that. Making a model would be easy..." an unintended but very good side effect.
Problems
- Sometimes a feeling that there's a communication issue / black hole; not knowing who to talk to. Having the conversation (in skype video, no less) was really good because it lets them know who to reach out to for help.
- Some sort of minor? trouble with the plate of parts, but not sure what... referred me to speak with the lab manager.
- Lack of central front page makes describing and explaining iGEM to other people (faculty members, fundraisers, etc.) very difficult. Nowhere to link to. I told him to just give out links to igem07 wiki frontpage and that we'll be making it much better soon.
Action Items
- Have similar skype video conversation with members of the team next week to emphasize using the wiki to present the goal of the team and daily progress towards goal. Perhaps also give links to successfully used templates for wiki organization (berkeley / MIT wiki layout?) Show them the rss feed screensaver.
- Also touch base with lab manager, either via email or in that skype conversation, about part problems. Demonstrate how to use part problem list on front page.
- Touch base with nearby teams and help organize a meetup in august
- Follow up with David.
Lethbridge
Hans-Joachim Wieden - +1.403.329.2303
- 4:09 12 July
No response; left message to please call back.
- 1:32 13 July
No response
- 1:32 16 July
Started thinking about team in February. Couldn't find info about how competition was run... Would have been great to have a four-page flyer describing how things get started, the schedule, sizes of teams, what the deliverable is... something that could be used as a template to recruit team, and or be used to write a reasonable course description for a summer course (this is impossible to do for new teams)
Came back from TTT zurich and that's when the students really got into lab. Hans-Joachim has managed to impress on them the impracticality of the typical igem elaborate ideas and the team has actually decided on a project with fairly reasonable milestones, including:
- making a Theopheline riboswitch biobrick that can repress translation of CheZ (based on a theopheline switch that's been published; they have gotten the constructs)
- making a Theopheline(?) riboswitch biobrick that can control LacI
- Coupling LacI to a fluorescent reporter device
Already initiated collaboration with UofC team - it's working well.
They added their project description to their wiki today. Apparently Hans-Joachim had a meeting with the dean about having an iGEM summer course next year about 10 minutes after I called. It's too bad he didn't contact us about pointing him to a reasonable course description, or material, or similar efforts, etc.
Action Items
- Email a description of iGEM useful / adaptable to a summer course description to Hans
- Email links to similar courses and to their materials and other papers to Hans
- Determine extent of collaboration with Calgary team
Minnesota
Yiannis Kaznessis - 612.624.4197
- 4:11 12 July
Things not going well! Haven't gotten needed additional funding. Team disintegrated about a month ago. Not enough students "subscribed to the idea of the competition" - they already had research topics & advisors. Yiannis blames himself for not advertising enough, emphasizing potential of iGEM projects & career path benefits. Two bottlenecks he encountered: forming the team and getting the resources needed to do experiments -> can't get funds to do experiments without lots of students, can't attract & hold onto students without the resources.
Can't participate this year at this point. Next year: the bioinformatics institute (BSI) makes offers to students around February; Yiannis wants to explicitly present an iGEM team as one of the projects students can apply to work on at that point in time, instead of in may, as it occurred this year.
Action Items
- Check on status of Minnesota registration money, refund if possible
- follow up with Yiannis in August to make sure he's coming to the Jamboree
Missouri Miners
Katie Shannon - 573.341.6336
- 4:30 12 July
4 students working on timer, 3 working on breathalizer. Did it that way because funding limited team size to less than or equal to 4, so they had 2 teams. Haven't had problem with registration fee;
What could we do better next year for 1st year teams? Get registration website online much sooner! How did you get a team together? Made flyers (using central questions), had info session, got 30 students! Not as many engineers, but that's probably because she didn't hang as many on the engineering side of the campus. Had organizational meeting in time for students to apply for ORUI ($1000) on-campus summer funding (deadline in april) - would have been harder to support team if She had missed this deadline. One of the stipulations of the ORUI funding is that the students have to write a little paper about their experience - we should ask for copies.
Action Items
- Email Katie Shannon to request team to put project abstract, picture, and roster online.
- Email Katie Shannon & Todd Eckdahl about organizing an august meet-up / bbq.
- Email Katie Shannon at end of summer to request copies of ORUI student essays.
Naples
Diego di Bernardo - +39 081 6132 319
- 3:56 18 July
sent email requesting times to talk to dibernardo@tigem.it
Peking
Yiping Wang - +86 010 62758490
Prairie View
Raul Cuero - 936.261.5011
Purdue
Jenna Rickus - 765.494.1197
- 5:31 12 July
No response; left message to please call back.
- 2:37 13 July
No response
- 12:54 17 July
No response
- 3:25 18 July
sent email requesting times to talk to rickus@purdue.edu
- 1:34 19 July
called in time interval specified in email... no answer
Things are going much better this summer. Students didn't really get iGEM enthusiasm until the jamboree (4 students attended). One of them is with the team again and he is providing an infectious enthusiasm to the new team, which generally hit the ground running a lot better this year. They are doing a lot more modeling and quantitative design this year. Second advisor hadn't been to Jamboree or ttt until this year. So the two advisors are much more ready this year. The roles are more clear, everyone is more comfortable in the lab, and the funding is more solid. Last year's team didn't get proactive for recruiting for this year's team until late - end of march. We could help that process a lot by making a point of telling teams to start getting organize and recruiting at the beginning of the winter semester and then providing lots of template posters and other promotional materials (flyers, ppt presentation templates, course description,
This team has gotten everyone by word of mouth (faculty, excited deans recruit students).
The team is not active on our wiki, and was not last year either. Jenna says the team has made a facebook group and is using it to communicate and share data much in the way she wished last year's team had used the wiki.
Trying to organize industry sponsorship fair at which students practice their presentations and company recruiters - possible source of revenue.
Meetup: could drive to chicago, ohio, indianapolois. Virginia & North Carolina too far.
action items:
- Email Jenna Rickus:
- ask for list of nearby teams that could participate or host in a meet up
- ask for team to post picture and project description and link to facebook group on the wiki
- figure out a 3 minute intro video that breaks the ice and get's teams confident about making informal overviews to their team and project.
Rice
Joff Silberg - 713.348.3849 (got from google search)
- 5:42 12 July
Left a message to please call back. Not sure if it went to the correct mailbox.
- 3:34 18 July
sent email requesting times to talk to joff@rice.edu
- 1:35 27 July
Got an email saying today would be ok, called, just left a message.
St Petersburg
Evgeny Zatulovskiy - +7 921 362 47 72
- 3:36 18 July
sent email requesting times to talk to ZatulovskyE@mail.ru (Undergraduate)
Tokyo Tech
Daisuke Kiga - +81 45 924 5213
Tsinghua
Guoqiang Chen - 86 10 62783844
Turkey
Mahinur Akkaya - +90 312 210 3196
USTC
Haiyan Liu - +86 551 3607451
- 3:38 18 July
sent email requesting times to talk to hyliu@ustc.edu.cn
Valencia
Javier Urchueguía - +34963879895
- 3:40 18 July
sent email requesting times to talk to jfurchueguia@fis.upv.es
Wisconson
Franco Cerrina - 608.263.4955
- 3:30 12 July
No response; left message to please call back
- 5:30 12 July
Tried again. No luck. Didn't leave message.
- 2:38 13 July
No response
- 3:47 18 July
sent email requesting times to talk to fcerrina@wisc.edu
