Valencia/Final Remarks
From 2007.igem.org
Now, the iGEM competition of this year is almost finished and we think that could be a good idea to try to evaluate the evolution of our iGEM team. Maybe it could be of interest for people that are thinking of participating in next year's competition or could be useful to avoid that other teams make the same mistakes as us.
This year we took the decision of making a reduced team in such a way that all the people in the team had a clear responsability and role. When the team was formed, several general talks were planned in order that old students had the proper required background. Some of these talks were given by the team of professors and advisors, but some of them also by the students themselves. From the educational point of view and as a consequence of the Spanish educational system which is not fond of multidisciplinarity, this is quite a good experience because it allows the interaction of students of different disciplines working as a group and they learn to comunicate among themselves.
The main target of all this formation period was to reach a point in July in which the students were able to design their project and develop it in a more or less autonomous way. At this point professors and advisors should only participate with some advices and support when needed. Nevertheless, the students should keep in mind one fundamental thing, the project should be simple enough to be finished before the Jamboree, so they should be careful in that sense, because lab work gives lots of surprises.
In that way, we consider that they solved these limitations in quite a smart way as they thought the project as a modular one that they could complicate it more and more according to the progress of the lab work.
Although the in silico work was performed properly by the students without requiring too much help from the professors or advisor's team. The experimental work had a lot of problems, and at least at this moment, according to the formation of our students, it is quite difficult to think that it could be developped without the help of a qualificated lab people. It is an issue that will be discussed in forthcoming iGEM particpations of our team.
At the end of the road, we realise that the efford was worthwhile for students, advisors and professors. We are looking forward for the exciting future this science has.
All the team of Professors and advisors.
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Students Valoration of the Experience
Arnau(Background in Biology)
Hicela(Background in Biology)
To participate in the competition iGEM this year has been a stimulating experience for me, because I met a intelligent and interested group of people to discover a new way to make science, because I was working in a harmonic team not only committed with the carried out a project, also, with the personal growth of each one of their members, and also, today is very important the satisfaction of having been able to contribute the personal knowledge for the achievement of a common objective. This way, the competition has contributed me tools to strengthen my formation and in the same way a heap of knowledge that can be useful in the professional exercise.
Now in the nearest end, I can not to say if iGEM was like I thought, neither less than I believed, I only can to say simply has been a total different way to create and it`s for this reason that I cant value it like a jointly way to investigate and effective discussion space about of practice applications of the “life”. For the news “iGEMeros” (new participants students for the iGEM) I suggest to consider in each new project the possibility that it will be a complement of the previous one, because may be by this way we could manufacture new systems of parts that can be articulates together, being able to conform more complex systems.
Olga(Background in Biology)
Raul(Background in Biology)
Pablo(Background in Chemistry)
Debasish(Background in Chemical Engineering)
Javi(Background in Physics)
- Olga(Background in Biology)
- Raul(Background in Biology)
- Pablo(Background in Chemistry)
- Debasish(Background in Chemical Engineering)
- Javi(Background in Physics)
