Informal meeting 5 Feburary 2010

Start Time: 4.10 p.m.

Attendence

Rhilip, Rachel, Harsh, Younus, Alan, Steven, Da, Jannetta, Richard

Summary of the last formal meeting

• By the 17th of Feb we aim to begin shortlisting ideas
• By the 27th of Feb we aim to have decided on a project idea, and then have a week to make sure our chosen project is feasible and novel
• By the 3rd of March we aim to have finalised our project decision and to have decided on a project title
• We need to have a timeline ready by Web 10th of Feb
• There will be a computational modelling tutorial on Web 10th of Feb; biobricks and Clone Manager/Sequenter tutorials will follow
• We need to think about which glass award we would like to aim for

Ideas

Jannetta: There is a type of bacteria which binds to beans, and produces nitrogen from air. This means the plant does not have to get its nitrogen from the soil. The bacteria are not optimal: we could develop improved bacteria, and prevent the old bacteria from binding

Da: Diabetes treatment. Produce an insulin replacement. The quantity of bacteria used will need to be regulated, determined from the patient's conditions. What about immune system response?

Steven: Make biotechnology safe for outside the lab. Kill switches, etc.

dotProject

• A project management tool
• Allows you to set up tasks, with a start time and an end time
• Allows you to set up important milestones, like actually going to Boston in November
• Using the Human Resources features you can assign people to a task, who will be informed by email
• You can update a task to give an estimate of how far from completion it is
• Tasks can be dependent on each other - one task may not be able to begin until another is completed
• You can view a Gantt chart, which shows the tasks, how far from completion they are, and their dependencies
• Using the Gantt chart you can see the effects of tasks overrunning
• Trouble tickets - list of problems that need fixing, allocated to certain people
• Has forums for discussions, which we may or may not find useful
• Has a calendar
• We will probably make the meeting chair responsible for setting up new tasks
• There is documentation on the [http://www.dotproject.net/ dotProject website]
• Don't use the browser's forward and back buttons!

Action points

• We are meeting early on Wed 10th to discuss and finalise the time line. Meet at 3.30
• Data mining of previous projects needs to be completed by Friday 12th Feb
• Everyone should add their contact details and personal deadlines to their personal wiki page
• Everyone try using dotProject
• Everyone check the timeline as Philip is working on it, it should be finished by Wed
• More ideas, work on existing ideas