Informal meeting 19 February 2010

Start time: 4.10 pm

Attendance

• Present: Alan, Da (Computer), Harsh, Jannetta (Chair), Philip, Rachel, Younus (Minutes), Zoltan (left early)
• Apologies: Steven
• Absent: Richard

Summary of Previous Meeting

• Shortlisting - Scoring of all ideas out of 10 according to agreed criteria onto table

Shortlisting of ideas [22 to ...]

• Jannetta added up total scores for each idea of project;
• 22 ideas in total;
• sorted ideas based on scores with highest at top;
• decided together whether to keep or discard ideas;
• as Richard was not present, we did not discard any of his many ideas - will go through early on Wed

List of potential/possible ideas:

1. Wound healing
2. DNA computing
3. Concrete
4. Hydrocarbon degradation (needs further research)
5. Coating BS spores
6. BactoNatto- coating BS (spores?)
7. Head lice
8. Diabetes (problems: have to infect whole system with bacteria, hypoglycaemia, need to take many different measurement, protein kinase B may have effects on other systems)
9. MazEF (sub-project)

Ideas to discard (reasons):

1. Aquarium (done before in prev. projects + thermometers)
2. Sequestering Arsenic (done before in prev. projects)
3. Nitrogen
4. Filtering body fluids
5. French Flag
6. Antibiotic resistance (resistance against anti-resistance; many ethical issues)
7. CF (bacteria into lungs; how to protect B. subtilis itself against DNase enzymes it secretes? Possibly use pro-drugs or limit time to work with a kill switch)

Action Point

• JH & AW: Registration; Wellcome trust funding; additional team members (graphics designer, chemical engineer); advisors?
• Jannetta to e-mail reminder to JH & AW; Zoltan to set up script (every two days!)
• To complete uploading of data mining on to merged page on wiki (Phil, Richard, Steven?)
• Jannetta and Phil: Timeline summary for JH and AW - create Excel spreadsheet with dates showing the things we need to do to get Gold (start/finish dates, hard/soft deadlines, what needs to be done for Gold, for Silver, for Bronze)
• All: check whether you need visas + Check if passports are in date
• Harsh’s idea of cheaper and quicker flight to Boston option
• Modelling Tutorials - On hold - Need to reschedule tutorials until after we have decided on our final project idea

Next Three Meetings

• Chair, Minutes and computer for next three meetings:
  • Meeting dates: Formal-Wed 24th Feb; Informal-Fri 26th Feb; Formal-Wed 3rd March
  • Chair: Rachel, Younus, Younus
  • Minutes: Younus, Zoltan, Zoltan
  • Comp: Da, Phil, Phil
• Formal Meeting [24th Feb 2010]
  • Early meeting from 3 pm at 9.22.
  • Joined by JH & AW at 4 pm.
  • Apologies in advance from Phil – will only be able to attend up to 3.30pm