Team:Stanford/NotebookPage/31 March 2010

Meeting Agenda

• Watch the following presentations prior to the meeting:

1. Cambridge 2009

2. ArtScienceBangalore 2009

3. MIT 2006

4. Caltech 2008

• Consider the following questions during the meeting (with regard to the above presentations):

1. What do you think makes a good igem Project?

2. Personal Likes and Dislike and why

3. Using these presentations, how should we go about developing a project?

• Consider other projects not listed above

Meeting Notes

'09 Cambridge:

• Good Modeling and use of design tools
• Great applicability and utility
• Too many graphs resulted in distraction?
• Good characterization
• User-friendly color scheme
• Good use of abstraction
• Possible: unequal allocation of work
• Noticeable systems out of parts

'09 ArtScience Bangalore:

• Original idea from homeland
• Sense of purpose?
• Presentation seemed out of order
• Succinct and clear presentation
• Lack of data in comparison to other teams
• Community Outreach (gold medal-related work)

'06 MIT:

• Very interactive presentation
• Good level of abstraction
• Good decomposition
• Technically advanced the field
• Good diagrams
• Physically proved their success (via samples)
• Scent/fragrance applications are inexpensive
• Synthetic biology can be fun
• Needed a more contextual basis
• Question posed by Prof. Smolke: Did they meet their goal? Easily-defined milestones

'08 Caltech:

• Equal allocation of work
• Breadth and depth of project
• Spent the right amount of time on hard data/graphs
• 2 types from 1 common precursor
• Good idea of random differentiaton
• Presenter exchange
• Perhaps a better citation system for literary sources?
• Was this project too risky or ambitious? What is ambitious or simple?
• Did the division of labor work well?

Take home messages:

• Good characterization/analysis and modeling
• High quality parts
• Decomposition of project into milestones - easy to define successes or goals
• Have some context or application area (before/after?)
• Have an engaging presentation that involves audience involvement
• Have an engaging or provocative project idea that engages the five senses?
• Consider best work allocation and team knowledge
• Project should advance field and provide foundational advances of some sort
• Project should be communicated on various levels of abstraction (via diagrams)
• Project should allow team members to have fun

Photographs from Meeting

Comments

Agenda Items for the Next Meeting

• Brainstorm at least three project ideas (just bare bones) in each of the five different iGEM categories