Meetups

Introduction

At the very start of our iGEM journey, we realised that science doesn’t happen in isolation but in conversation. From the beginning on, we wanted to learn not only from experts but also from other teams facing similar challenges, sharing the same curiosity that drives synthetic biology forward. Our first chance to do so came at the BFH EuromeetUp, where we presented our early project idea and received our first round of feedback. It was so exciting to see how other teams approached similar problems in entirely different ways. Later, at our own meetup in Düsseldorf as well as the meetup in Münster, we exchanged insights about the projects of all the other teams and had the chance to learn about their ideas in Synthetic Biology. Each meetup reminded us that iGEM is more than a competition. It forms a global network of learners and innovators, building on one another’s strengths to create something meaningful - and we can be part of it.

BFH Meetup

A big part of the iGEM year are the meet-ups where many teams come together in order to connect to other teams and get to know their projects. And this is exactly what we did! The BFH Euromeet in Frankfurt is one of the biggest events (besides the Grand Jamboree at the end of our year) that our team has the opportunity to attend. This meet-up was a good mix of work and pleasure, so let us recap: It all started with a lot of preparation before the meet-up. Logos were designed, posters made, presentations drafted - in order to impress the other teams and judges in Frankfurt. On Friday we started our weekend off by participating in the lab olympics. This involved a series of fun activities such as blind filling gel docs and pipette tip long throw - we are proud to say that our team member and her group won the event, earning a voucher! The evening ended with connecting with fellow iGEM teams over food and drinks. Saturday was the most important day, since it was time to present our project. Our presenters Dariush Yaghmaie Zadeh and Emma Tullius did a wonderful job! Also, we had the chance to get to know a lot of other projects - there are many interesting projects this year! In the afternoon we presented our poster and were able to get to know even more projects. We were happy about all the feedback we received and we discussed it in detail to best implement it in our project. Also, we got a lot of interest concerning our chemostat and some teams even said they would be interested in using it! This gives us the amazing opportunity to maybe help future iGEM teams with our project, which is something we would love to achieve. Moreover, we attended some compelling seminars on topics such as “Patent Rights – Save your Intellectual Property!”, “Pitch it like it’s hot,” or “Pipeline Design” and heard helpful insights from past iGEM participants. Our Saturday ended with dinner with iGEM Kaiserslautern, a great party, good conversations and of course - amazing dance moves. Sunday concluded our trip to Frankfurt with presentations from last year’s winning teams and the announcement of this year's Euromeet winners - congrats to the winners, we will see you in Paris! All in all we had an amazing weekend - we are grateful to the organisers from iGEM Bielefeld-CeBiTec, iGEM GU Frankfurt, and iGEM Hamburg - they did a marvelous job at organising and hosting the event!

Figure 1: Our Team and Poster at the BFH 2025

Düsseldorf Meetup

iGEM Düsseldorf has already hosted a small meetup in the past so this year we continued our little tradition! Our very own meetup at the HHU took place on the 5th of July with teams from Aachen, Bielefeld, Dresden and Bochum. The day started with Welcome coffee, snacks and a quiz about the individual iGEM experience to get to know each other better. This quiz also included a slot where everyone was supposed to put in their typical iGEM-experience-song, which made for a wonderful playlist including, “Under Pressure”, “Don’t Stop Believin’” and “The Winner Takes It All”.

Then our Advisor and iGEM Ambassador for Europe Florian Hänsel held an input on Human Practices, which was especially important because of its significance as a judging criteria in iGEM. This was followed by our project presentation and a long lunchbreak, which included a trip to the beautiful botanical garden and the Day of Research at the HHU. We started into the afternoon part of the day by listening to an interesting presentation from our PI and the head of the Institute of Cell and Interaction Biology Prof. Dr. Guido Grossmann, whose presentation was titled Soil-on-a-chip: microfluidics for root science (or: how clumsiness drives innovation) and gave an fascinating insight into his work.

This was followed by presentations from the iGEM Teams Dresden with TRAPS, who are developing an in vivo RNA detection system, Bochum with Glow to Grow, who are working on a more affordable treatment in order to remove excess iron from patients, Aachen with N Close, who are developing a 3-step retention mechanism for nitrogen in animal manure and Bielefeld with Cellective, who are working on a programmable RNA system that activates cell death in target cancer cells. We loved to hear about these compelling projects and are excited to see how the projects develop in the future! After this very intense and information filled day, we concluded the meetup with a barbecue, good conversation and games.

All in all we would say that it was a very successful meetup and we were very happy to get to know the other teams and their projects. It especially made us realize the significance of the iGEM community and the well structured feedback from the other teams was extremely helpful and at least for our team we can say that it was integrated in future communication about our project. We are excited to see the progress of the other teams in Paris!

Figure 2: Impressions of the Düsseldorf Meetup

Münster Meetup

25 . - 27.07.2025 iGEM Münster MeetUp During our year we also attended a lot of meetups - one of them was the meetup in Münster. The whole meetup lasted from the 25th of July until the 27th of July and it was very nice to give and receive feedback on our and others' projects. On Friday we all met up at 3pm in the Schloss Münster, which was also the main location where the whole meetup took place. The meetup started with a welcome presentation followed by the first talk from Professor Dirk Prüfer, whose research focuses on the biotechnical usage of plants to create sustainable raw materials. His talk was very inspiring since you could feel that he loves what he does. The second talk of the Day by Stefanie Weigold followed. She talked about how ethical considerations can have a real impact on your scientific work and how to best approach Human Practices. Her talk was very interesting, since she shared her knowledge and showed us methods on how to connect responsibility and innovation with the right inspiration. The meetup also included a lot of games and bonding opportunities with other teams. On day two after breakfast, Team Münster organized two workshops. One about how to build a real concept for our project and make it a start up and the other one was all about team communication and how to navigate and resolve conflicts. Both workshops were very informative. After a short lunch break, we continued with the team presentations. We presented in front of the other teams, as well as five judges, that later gave us feedback on our project and our research poster. Day three included breakfast and two talks. All in all, it was a great weekend. It was very well planned and we were able to connect and get to know a lot of members from other iGEM Teams. Also, we were able to receive valuable feedback on our project.

Figure 3: Impressions from the Münster Meetup

Eindhoven Mini Jamboree

During the iGEM year there are a lot of meetups - they come in different sizes but were always a great experience because we got to meet other teams and their projects. This is always amazing because we saw the evolution of different projects during the year, were able to meet a lot of other iGEMers and therefore feel the sense of community that is a vital part of iGEM. So on the 17th of October we packed our presentation, stickers and poster and made our way to Eindhoven for the last meetup before the Grand Jamboree. This meetup was organized perfectly and we had a lot of fun. Our day started with an early morning and a train ride to Eindhoven. As we arrived we were given our name tags and some goodies for the day. The opening ceremony was followed by some sponsoring pitches and the presentation of the iGEM team at TU Eindhoven. Their project is tackling chronic diarrhea by detecting bile acids in stool samples with the help of their bioluminescent biosensor platform. This enables faster and more accessible diagnostic insights. After their presentation the teams were split into two different groups with their corresponding judges and the first round of presentations commenced. Since we already knew some of the teams it was very nice to see their developments so shortly before the Jamboree. The day continued with a great lunch and the second round of presentations, which included our project STREAM. The judging included a short presentation, questions from the judges and a poster market that took place after all the presentations were concluded. A quiz about iGEM related questions followed - did you know that 750 people applied to become a judge, which made for the most competitive selection process ever? Afterwards the awards were given out - congrats to KU Leuven with their project Phyto Block! They engineered Bacillus subtilis to detect Phytophthora (species that causes black pod disease in cocoa plants) and secrete antimicrobial peptides, creating a biocontrol spray that protects cocoa plants. The day was concluded by some drinks and further getting to know the other teams. All in all it was a lovely meetup - we thank the iGEM team from Eindhoven for all their work!

Figure 4: The team in Eindhoven

Grand Jamboree in Paris

The Grand Jamboree in Paris was the finale and highlight of our iGEM year. Therefore we are happy to announce that we are gold medal winners and were nominated for the bioproduction village award! In the following we will give you an insight into our eventful Grand Jamboree experience. In preparation for the jamboree, slides were designed, questions and presentations practiced, merch designed and a lot more. Over three days more than 400 teams from all over the world presented their projects and therefore some of the newest advances in synthetic biology.

Figure 5: The team at the Jamboree

Most of our team arrived on Monday and we quickly used the chance of picking up our badges to walk to the expo and get to know Paris a bit better. We continued the evening with an entertaining dinner and the last practice for our judging session by assigning certain people the questions we had anticipated the week before. On Tuesday we attended the opening show. This was an exciting experience because all the villages were presented - including our biomanufacturing village. Our judging session almost followed the opening show, and we have to say: it was a success! Despite our nervousness the 5 minute update on our project went really well and the questions were correctly anticipated with our backup slides. Coming out of the judging session a huge burden fell off our shoulders and we were exhausted but happy. Nevertheless we still had to present our project at our booth where we pulled up our project poster and showcased our chemostat. We divided our team into presentation groups so that everyone had a chance to look at the organizations, sponsors, expert and team presentations and - of course - the other team booths! We ended the day with a delicious persian dinner that was prepared by some team mates.

Figure 6: Impressions from the Jamboree Day 1

The next day we continued with an all day booth session and it was really gratifying to hear how other people could have used our project for theirs and how some of them would like to do so in the future. We also laid out some iGEM meme postcards (this has become a tradition over the past years) and seemingly a few people even look forward to collecting theirs each year. During the day we heard about amazing projects and listened to interesting live stage talks such as “Future Builders: Designing the Next Decade of AI and Biology”. The day ended with a bit of sightseeing in Paris.

Figure 7: Second Day at the Jamboree

On Thursday the projects that were assigned the booth presentations changed and we were able to visit a lot of other teams with innovative ideas. Again, the day included visits to sponsor booths, which was interesting because we were able to learn a lot more about their work. Furthermore we had our own live stage talk, titled “STREAMlining Bioproduction: Affordable Tools for Innovation”. Our day was concluded with a visit to the Eiffel Tower, which is the typical spot for iGEM teams to meet before the final day show.

Figure 8: Impressions from the Jamboree day 3

We heavily anticipated this show since the Grand Prize winners, medals for each team (these are given out depending on each team's achievements) and special prizes would be announced there. We congratulate iGEM Brno (overgrad) with their project that turned duckweed into sustainable and nutrient-rich animal feed. If you are interested, also check out iGEM McGill (undergrad) and iGEM Greatbay (highschool) who won in their age groups and did an amazing job. Although we did not win the Grand Prize we were successful - we are very proud of our nomination for the bioproduction village award and our gold medal! A lot of work went into our project and we are really happy that our results represent that. All in all we had a great year and we thank everyone who has supported us on our iGEM journey!

Figure 9: Impressions from the final day of the Jamboree

Conclusion

Looking back, our meetups held the chance of evolving our project. Every discussion, suggestion, and shared laugh pushed us a little further - scientifically and personally. Some conversations sparked exchange on a personal level; others helped us rethink how we communicate our ideas or present our results. The feedback encouraged us to look at our system through new lenses. These interactions taught us an important lesson: While protocols and plasmids can be exchanged, it’s the ideas and enthusiasm that are characteristic for the iGEM community. We loved the openness, creativity, and kindness we were able to experience through each meetup because now we carry that collaborative spirit forward.