So You Think you can Synthesize?

Macquarie University has once again entered a team of undergraduate students to compete in the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) synthetic biology competition. Over the last four years, our teams have won 3 silver and 1 bronze medals. This year our team is hoping to win a gold medal, though they do have one handicap- I will be coming along with them as a team advisor to the iGEM Giant Jamboree in Boston.

This year as an outreach activity, our iGEM team has created an online reality contest "So You Think You can Synthesize" where you can ask our student team any burning question you have about synthetic biology through a live chat feed and can vote for your favourite scientist. Looks like we are down to the last four scientific contestants now! You can also find videos about each of the eliminated contestants and about our team's experiences in iGEM here.

iGEM team hard at work