Team:UCL London/Week 9

Chill week - Week 9

23rd - 29th August

Mariam kindly arranged a photoshoot with a close friend, Allesandro (the rest of the photos can be found in the photo gallery). It was a great chance for us to relax and chill for a few hours in the nice weather at our famous Portico. Some of us took this as an opportunity to flex our modelling capabilities, uhumm uhmm "Ali"...

We spent the day researching the methods and technologies available for Ultrascale Down Automation. The majority of time was spent with pHD students and senior lecturers interviewing them about this technology. This was vital because this year we planned on introducing another unique aspect to iGEM and that is the ability to scale down our project. Obviously due to time restriction, this idea was only to be researched and nothing more. Nevertheless, it was quite an insight.

Elena, our Modeling champion, has put in a lot of effort in trying to collaborate and earn that extra credit for GOLD. She attempted to form modelling collaboration between the UCL and Bristol team and had a telephone conference with our collaborator Neeraj from Bristol University on this. We wanted them to operate our model into their BSIM program and as it has been proven, it worked!

Typical London weather, rainy and cold, but that was not going to stop us from proceeding with our public engagement event. Having carefully spent time planning our journey and printing our posters, we were set and ready. We hit multiple locations including the British Museum, Trafalgar Square, a church, a taxi cabin,etc. We interviewed dozens of people from different disciplines and backgrounds on issues critical to synthetic biology, and many of the responses were quite interesting. By 5 pm, our legs were gone, so we hit the pub, where we bid farewell to James who was leaving us.

Week 10