Collaboration

Introduction: Collaboration as the Soul of iGEM

In the journey of iGEM, collaboration is not a marginal item tucked away in the scoring rubric, but a working philosophy and value orientation that runs throughout the season. At OUC-Haide in the 2025 season, we advanced “Collaboration” in parallel with our self-developed RTPNR framework (Research–Theory–Practice–New theory–Re-practice/Re-search). Every exchange meeting became a new act of “Research,” every integration of feedback crystallized into “New Theory,” and every round of revalidation opened up higher levels of “Re-practice/Re-search.” In other words, collaboration was not a showcase of “work already done,” but a vital mechanism through which research could truly be optimized, validated, and expanded.

Throughout the season, we gradually shaped a team culture of “collaboration as progress.” First, on campus, our ongoing exchange with OUC-China was not only about aligning theory and design but also about mutual assistance in experiments and hardware, maintaining a normalized pattern of two-way support across the entire season. Second, at the regional level, we actively joined the Northeast Exchange and also initiated the “Four Provinces of the Yellow River Exchange,” sharing information, resources, and methodologies to scale cooperation from individual teams to a broader regional ecosystem. Third, at the national level, we regarded CCiC as a “concentrated touchstone” for high-density feedback, while also maintaining ongoing communication with iGEM Ambassadors, translating the official perspective into operational rhythms and standards. Fourth, in disciplinary breadth, we formed “collaborative loops” with partners from computer science, art and design, and medicine, enabling a biomaterial project targeting diabetic chronic wounds to extend meaningfully into engineering implementation, clinical pathways, public communication, and educational outreach.

Looking back, our collaboration cannot be reduced to a mere list of “events we attended.” Instead, it can clearly answer three essential questions: Why do we collaborate, how do we collaborate, and how do we become better through collaboration? The following sections unfold along the trajectory of “on-campus collaboration — regional exchange — regional initiative — long-term partnership — national and community engagement — interdisciplinary collaboration — reflection and conclusion,” presenting OUC-Haide’s full practice of Collaboration in the 2025 season.

II. On-Campus Collaboration — OUC-Haide × OUC-China Team Exchange

In mid-March, at the beginning of the season, we held an in-person exchange with OUC-China on the Yushan Campus. This was not a mere “information briefing,” but an in-depth discussion across core domains: wet lab, dry lab, Human Practices, hardware and wearable design, visual design, and external communication. Both teams arrived with questions and left with concrete tasks, giving the exchange a natural structure of “input — processing — output.”

Wet Lab. Both teams first exchanged the overall routes and milestones of their experimental designs for the season. We introduced our concept of treating diabetic chronic wounds with engineered yeast and antimicrobial peptides, along with our preliminary logic for screening hydrogel materials and their functionalization. OUC-China, in turn, shared their stable experience with E. coli expression and induction parameter control, reminding us to conduct pre-validation on the “details” of antimicrobial peptide activity. They pointed out how small deviations in induction temperature, duration, or media composition could amplify into large uncertainties in results. From this, we wrote into our own checklist a three-step protocol of “stability of culture conditions — curve fitting of activity — evaluation of batch-to-batch variation,” reframing “seemingly repetitive steps” into “essential repetitions of quality control.”

Dry Lab/Modeling. OUC-China showcased how their predictive and sensitivity analyses served to constrain experimental conditions in reverse, suggesting the practical strategy of “using a simple, interpretable model to calibrate a complex experiment.” Inspired, we shifted from our previous linear workflow of “experiment → modeling review” to a cyclical one of “experiment → modeling → re-experiment.” Each fitted activity curve, each diffusion coefficient estimate, and each boundary condition setting was no longer a “post hoc embellishment,” but a “prior calibration.” This methodological adjustment directly reduced our time and reagent costs, while making every “failure” more informative.

Human Practices (HP). We exchanged ideas on questionnaire design, interviewee composition, and the wording of ethics disclaimers. OUC-China noted that the adoption of wound dressings depends not only on patients but also strongly on “physicians’ prescribing habits” and “caregivers’ perceived burden in nursing scenarios.” Based on this insight, we decided to add branches targeting doctors and family caregivers in our surveys, linking “prescription decision — payment willingness — risk perception — follow-up frequency” into a closed variable group, and to separate “in-hospital pathways” and “at-home pathways” in our interview outlines. In return, we shared how our RTPNR framework’s “reflection-feedback” loop enables us to consolidate micro-adjustments triggered by feedback into “new theory,” which then guides the next round of practice — ensuring “driven iteration” rather than “random patchwork.”

Hardware and Wearables. This was a highlight of the joint exchange. OUC-China presented their design sketches for automated liquid handling and miniaturized control units, proposing to “introduce sensing devices into the dressing patch, making it not just a carrier but an endpoint that can ‘perceive its environment.’” We then expanded on our earlier idea of a “wearable smart hydrogel patch,” discussing low-power sensor options for temperature, humidity, pH, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs); the feasibility of micro-pumps and micro-valves in a wearable device; and how to form a closed loop of “sensing — judging — drug release/alert.” After the meeting, both teams agreed to complete a “small-scale joint feasibility test” before autumn and to share experience in PCB prototyping, 3D-printed casings, and considerations of patch–skin interface materials (breathability, biocompatibility, stability in adhesion–detachment cycles).

Visual Design and External Communication. Finally, we extended our collaboration into media and outreach. We shared with OUC-China our Wiki information architecture and page style guidelines, and agreed to conduct “one mock presentation + one instant revision” for each other before the final defense, leveraging “peer-to-peer understanding” to find the shortest path to explaining complex content.

What began as a single campus exchange ultimately crystallized into “reusable task lists” across multiple dimensions, pushing our collaboration beyond “getting to know each other” into “sharing responsibilities.”

Img.1 OUC-China X OUC-Haide Exchange and Sharing Session

III. Regional Exchange — Online Exchange of Northeast China iGEM Teams

On May 11, we were invited to participate in the Northeast China online iGEM exchange hosted by Jilin University. Teams from Northeast Forestry University, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Northeast Normal University, Lanzhou University, and others gathered together. Each team shared using a clear structure of “Problem — Approach — Bottleneck — Demand.” The intensity of this meeting lay in the fact that no one was “showcasing achievements”; instead, we were “laying out difficulties.” Through collectively “deconstructing difficulties,” many abstract, high-level suggestions were translated into practical, actionable steps.

In our presentation, we highlighted the clinical characteristics and caregiving challenges of diabetic chronic wounds, explaining why “antibacterial alone” or “moisturizing alone” is insufficient to cover the complexity of the wound microenvironment. We also shared our preliminary screening logic for hydrogel materials and how we set functionalization targets (antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, microenvironment regulation, tissue-regeneration friendly) to align with clinical needs. Students from Northeast Normal University quickly offered a key piece of feedback: if the final use of the dressing requires a prescription, then physicians’ prescribing habits and differences across departments would form the first barrier to adoption. They recommended adding linked variables in Human Practices design, such as “prescription behavior — awareness of medication safety — patient compliance.” This suggestion had a profound influence on our subsequent questionnaires and interview outlines, directly prompting us to systematically map out the “in-hospital pathway.”

The Beijing University of Chemical Technology team, on the other hand, reminded us from the perspective of materials industries: “optimal performance” does not necessarily equal “optimal marketability.” Companies often weigh factors like “popularity — supply chain — batch stability — precedents in regulation” when selecting materials. After the meeting, we added “material popularity and regulatory precedents” into our evaluation table, and included “industry practitioner interviews” as an independent Human Practices module. This was to avoid a situation where our project might become overly specialized technically while narrowing in practical applicability.

Afterwards, we transformed the meeting notes into two working lists: “Immediate Action Items” and “Tracking Items.” The former included adjustments to surveys and interviews, additional control experiments, and expanded material comparisons; the latter covered establishing cross-team communication channels, building shared research templates, and laying the groundwork for collaborative surveys. This exchange in Northeast China allowed us, in just one evening, to leap from “intuitive perceptions” to “systematic actions,” and for the first time, we deeply experienced the value of regional collaboration: “multi-point simultaneous calibration,” which significantly reduces the likelihood of any single team going astray in local blind spots.

Img.2 Conference Handbook for the Northeast China Online Exchange Meeting

Img.3 Meeting Agenda

IV. Regional Initiative — “Four Provinces of the Yellow River” Exchange

On May 31, we initiated and organized the event “iGEM Wisdom along the Yellow River | Four Provinces Exchange.” The idea stemmed from our earlier systematic regional survey, which revealed that the iGEM ecosystem in Shandong, Shanxi, Henan, and Hebei was relatively sparse. Many universities in these provinces lacked channels and paradigms for key issues such as “whether to participate — how to get started — where to seek support.”

Our survey covered three main dimensions: distribution of participating teams, current institutional resources, and perceptions and barriers among students and faculty. The data revealed a striking contrast: in regions like Shanghai, Beijing, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang, iGEM teams were densely clustered, while Shandong, Shanxi, Henan, and Hebei had far fewer. We illustrated this disparity with bar charts, providing a concrete basis for designing the subsequent exchange.

Img.4 The number of iGEM teams in the surveyed provinces

Further field research extended to key universities including Hebei Agricultural University, Hebei Medical University, Shanxi Medical University, and Zhengzhou University. The core findings were:

Significant Cognitive Gap.

About 72% of surveyed students reported “lacking a direct understanding of synthetic biology,” often perceiving it as “distant from daily life, with a high threshold of comprehension.” This lack of awareness was echoed by faculty: many universities reported that existing curricula focused mainly on basic molecular biology, cell biology, or clinical skills, with little emphasis on synthetic biology courses, case discussions, or project-based learning. Without real-world case teaching, students struggled to form a complete understanding from theory to practice. We therefore recommended that future educational design should introduce structured entry-level courses (e.g., “Foundations and Applications of Synthetic Biology”), combined with interactive science communication (such as online experimental demonstrations, virtual labs), case-driven learning (e.g., analysis of past iGEM projects), and tiered project-based training. These measures would progressively bridge the cognitive gap and enable students to transform synthetic biology from an abstract concept into concrete practice.

Limitations of Disciplinary Orientation.

Many life science programs in these regions leaned toward teacher training or clinical practice, with curricula centered on basic biology experiments, animal cell culture, or medical diagnostics. Cross-disciplinary design thinking and teamwork opportunities were scarce. This professional focus meant students had little natural exposure to synthetic biology projects. For example, some universities noted that while students expressed interest in synthetic biology, the absence of relevant courses, experimental platforms, and interdisciplinary mentorship prevented them from forming teams or initiating projects. Many respondents stressed the urgent need for interdisciplinary platforms — such as practice courses co-taught by biology, engineering, computer science, and design faculty, or on-campus synthetic biology workshops — where students could cultivate project design skills and collaborative awareness in authentic contexts.

Shortage of Funding and Resources.

The obstacles to forming iGEM teams were multidimensional and intertwined, with lack of funding being the most direct and widespread. Over 60% of respondents cited insufficient seed funding, making it difficult to purchase reagents, consumables, or cover registration fees. Nearly half reported lacking relevant synthetic biology lab infrastructure (e.g., DNA synthesizers, microfluidic systems, cell culture facilities). Even motivated institutions could not perform complete experimental validation. Beyond funds and infrastructure, 35% of respondents lacked interdisciplinary collaboration experience, 32% lacked basic knowledge of synthetic biology, 28% lacked external mentorship, and 22% faced scheduling conflicts with coursework. Together, these obstacles formed a systemic barrier to participation. Thus, future educational support must address funding (e.g., dedicated seed grants), resource sharing (e.g., cross-institutional access to lab platforms), and mentorship (e.g., joint guidance by academia and industry) in parallel, to truly break down barriers and help aspiring students enter synthetic biology practice and innovation.

This series of findings revealed systemic weaknesses in synthetic biology education in Shanxi and Hebei — a lack of awareness guidance, limited cross-disciplinary collaboration, and shortages of funding and experimental resources. In Shandong and Henan, while a few active teams existed, they still faced challenges such as limited replication of experience and a lack of regional platforms. Based on these insights, we decided to “bring the meeting to where it is needed most” and create an event that could both inspire and provide tangible support.

The event adopted a hybrid “online + offline” model with “dual main venues + multi-site linkage.” A week before the meeting, we sent out a “self-assessment form” to potential participants, covering organizational status, faculty and lab conditions, core project direction, and support needs. On the day, experienced teams deconstructed “how to turn an idea into an executable iGEM project” with real cases, followed by questions from new teams. Unlike traditional “presentation + Q&A,” we used a “collaborative whiteboard” as the main interface: each question corresponded to “action items” and “responsible persons,” while each suggestion was linked to “template files,” “method lists,” and “reference SOPs.” This “on-the-spot deliverables” model ensured that “exchange” and “execution” happened simultaneously.

We specially invited Zhang Xiaohan, the iGEM Ambassador for Shandong, as a guest. Her talk translated “official rhythms and red lines” into concrete schedules: “from now until a given deadline, what should we do each week, what should we check, what should we avoid.” For new teams, this “rhythm-based navigation” was far more useful than abstract explanations, as it directly aligned with internal administrative procedures and communication rhythms with faculty, reducing costs of “delay + rework.” After the meeting, we tabulated this rhythm plan and made it openly available for participants to copy.

Following the “Four Provinces” exchange, we created a shared “Regional Collaboration Toolkit,” including templates for surveys (patients, physicians, caregivers, industry practitioners), ethics disclaimers for interviews, presentation templates, Q&A banks for defenses, Wiki architecture guidelines, budget templates, risk checklists, and contingency plan examples. We also set up a three-month “tracking period,” with a rhythm of “one small online meeting per month + on-demand support.”

The significance of this regional initiative was to elevate “collaboration” from a one-off event into a sustainable mechanism, and to expand the circle of “beneficiaries” from our own team to a much larger community of participants

Img.5 Exchange Meeting of the Four Provinces in the Yellow River Basin

Img.6 Ambassador Zhang Xiaohan attending this exchange meeting

V. Long-Term Collaborations — OUC-China and Lanzhou University Teams

If one-off exchange meetings create a “high-density calibration” at specific moments, then long-term collaborations generate a “continuous iteration” along the timeline. In the 2025 season, we established year-round deep collaborations with OUC-China, LZU-MEDICINE-CHINA, and LZU-GANSU. Together, we built a complementary and mutually reinforcing partnership spanning wet lab, hardware design, modeling and validation, HP pathways, and outreach.

Our collaboration with OUC-China was “shoulder-to-shoulder.” Starting from our joint exchange in March, we implemented a combined mechanism of “monthly synchronization—weekly ad hoc communications—shared documents and dashboards.” On our shared Kanban board, the items routinely listed included “key risks this month,” “key milestones next month,” “items requiring partner support,” and “shareable deliverables,” all iterated weekly by both team leaders.

In the wet lab, we refined the antibacterial peptide activity validation process with granular detail: induction temperature/time/shaking speed, batch consistency in inhibition-zone measurements, and parameter boundaries in activity-curve fitting were all consolidated into a “mandatory checklist.” This checklist was archived as a standardized template in our shared drive, and later adapted by OUC-China for their materials-function testing, becoming one of their tools to control batch variability.

On the hardware side, we used a “wearable hydrogel patch” as the prototype to explore low-power sensor selection, sampling frequency, front-end amplification and filtering, data packaging and wireless transmission, and material-skin interface design. OUC-China contributed practical experience in automated liquid handling and control-unit integration, while we brought in-depth considerations of patch materials and gel-sensor coupling. Together, we converged on an iteration plan: “first build a minimum viable prototype (MVP) to validate data stability and ergonomics, then refine it into a closed-loop system.” Engineering details—such as PCB prototyping parameters, 3D-printed casings, and tear-off adhesive structures—were deposited into our shared repository.

Collaboration with LZU-MEDICINE-CHINA highlighted “complementation from the perspective of metabolism and microbiota.” Multiple rounds of online discussions focused on the interplay between chronic wound patients’ systemic status, local microenvironment, and drug adherence. They reminded us that engineered antimicrobial peptides combined with hydrogel materials act not only on the “local wound microenvironment,” but also influence treatment through metabolic conditions and gut microbiota composition. Thus, in our HP framework we needed to include the “doctor–patient–pharmacist” triad, and in experimental design we should monitor indirect effects on microbial communities and immune indicators. In response, we added “prescription behavior of physicians—pharmacists’ review logic—patient adherence” to our interview outlines, and incorporated immune-related markers into our experimental observations (e.g., extending “anti-inflammatory” considerations from material properties to “tracking and cross-validating inflammation biomarkers”). The value of this collaboration was that we no longer regarded the dressing solely as “a material acting locally on wounds,” but rather situated it within the holistic framework of “the patient’s overall health.”

Collaboration with LZU-GANSU brought forward the key cluster of “quorum sensing (QS)—biofilms—collective behaviors.” For chronic wounds, inhibiting individual bacteria does not necessarily reduce infection risks; the real challenge lies in biofilm formation and heightened tolerance driven by collective bacterial behavior. Their input prompted us to connect “antimicrobial peptide selection—release behavior—microenvironment modulation” with “anti-biofilm strategies,” considering approaches that integrate “biofilm inhibition” and “QS signal disruption” into material and functional design. We incorporated this “task line” into our late-season exploratory research plan: first, conduct literature screening to identify feasible strategies and evaluation metrics; second, assess docking points between material systems and release kinetics; finally, translate “conceptual ideas” into “measurable questions.” In the process, we also provided feedback based on our own experience to support their exploration of “the immunomodulatory potential of engineered bacteria,” allowing both sides to glimpse new possibilities at the boundaries of our respective domains.

Ultimately, these three collaborations distilled into four categories of outcomes:

Standardization — Transforming easily overlooked yet variability-prone details into “mandatory checklists” and “process templates.”

Engineering — Advancing from “conceptual functions” to “wearable prototypes,” aligning sensing, power supply, data link, and structural components to the principle of “buildable—usable—reusable.”

Systematization — Expanding the scope from “materials—function—local effects” to a systemic map of “patients—prescriptions—adherence—follow-ups,” aligning HP investigations with experimental indicators.

Theorization — Incorporating “sensitivity to QS and biofilms” into new theoretical generation, positioning it as a focal point for the next cycle of RTPNR.

In this sense, long-term collaboration is a mechanism that “writes growth rate into processes.” Unlike one-off activities that shine brightly in the moment, it steadily raises the trajectory—until, at some point, the curve suddenly steepens.

Img.7 Exchange Meeting with Lanzhou University

Img.8 The Lanzhou University team sharing their project

VI. National and Community Collaborations — CCiC and iGEM Ambassador

CCiC is a venue where “high-quality peer feedback from across the nation” is concentrated in one place. At the conference, we presented a stagewise narrative linking “materials—function—microenvironment—patient pathway—hardware prototype.” The core question was not “what we did,” but “why we made these choices and how we ensured they were verifiable and scalable.” The feedback we received was precise and actionable:

Shanghai Jiao Tong University suggested, from an experimental design perspective, adding a “thermosensitive hydrogel” control group, so that comparisons between thermosensitive and non-thermosensitive groups could directly support our claims about wearable comfort and controlled release.

Nanjing University advised, from an HP perspective, including “doctors and family caregivers” in our surveys and interviews, emphasizing the three-dimensional structure of “prescribers—users—caregivers,” and recommended differentiating prescription pathways across hospital tiers (community/secondary/tertiary).

We immediately incorporated these suggestions into our “on-the-spot revision list,” and within two weeks arranged corresponding control experiments and updated our HP questionnaires.

Throughout the season, we also maintained continuous communication with the iGEM Ambassador (Shandong region, Zhang Xiaohan). The Ambassador’s role was to translate “rules and rhythms” into “actionable language for team management.” For instance, when we planned the “Four Provinces SynBio Exchange,” the Ambassador reminded us from the official perspective: for “introductory activities” aimed at new teams, it is crucial to clarify the timeline, distinguish “mandatory” versus “optional” milestones, and flag “red lines and grey zones” to help early-stage teams avoid compliance risks. Moreover, activities should combine “reusable templates” with “on-site co-creation,” ensuring that participants not only “know” but also “can do.” These reminders helped us avoid the common pitfall of “lively but unproductive” events.

In routine communications with the Ambassador, we also presented RTPNR’s core HP logic of “reflection—feedback—new theory—re-practice.” The Ambassador’s advice was that when writing our Wiki, we must emphasize “change” as the main thread:

“Because feedback of type A, we specifically modified B;”

“Because risks of type C, we introduced control D;”

“Because limitations of type E, we substituted module F with strategy G.”

This prompted us to foreground “points of modification” in our Wiki, making collaboration-driven project improvements “visible, traceable, and verifiable.”

Thus, including CCiC and the Ambassador in the Collaboration section is not for “broad showcasing,” but to emphasize that national and community-level collaborations endowed us with a “sense of direction and rhythm.” They ensured our team iterated at high quality within the right frameworks and time windows. Such collaborations did not merely “add external voices,” but truly “integrated external corrections.”

Img.9 Group photo at CCIC

Img.10 Team members exchanging ideas with other teams

VII. Interdisciplinary Collaboration — Exploring Beyond Boundaries

A project on chronic wounds naturally spans biology, materials science, engineering, medicine, and communication. For us, “interdisciplinary” was never a decorative label; we embedded it directly into a collaboration chart of “who is responsible for whom, and who empowers whom.”

In computer science, we worked with algorithm-savvy partners to establish a lightweight pipeline covering “literature screening—knowledge graph—parameter extraction—model priors.” Faced with an overwhelming body of literature on antimicrobial peptides and material functionalization, the marginal benefit of manual reading quickly diminished. Thus, we built internal scripts for structured extraction of “keywords—abstracts—methods—indicators—conclusions,” enabling rough screening before manual verification, ensuring our time was spent where it mattered most. This tool was never intended to “replace humans with intelligence,” but rather to be “stable enough, fast enough, and reusable enough.” On the modeling side, we incorporated parameter ranges for “diffusion—release—degradation—environmental factors” as prior constraints into small-scale models, and used sensitivity analysis to identify which variables most urgently required experimental validation—so that every reagent, every culture, and every gel would yield maximum value.

In art and design, we collaborated with visual partners to refine the “minimal information set for visualization”: which mechanistic diagrams must be drawn, which data plots should be transformed into infographics, which technical terms required analogy or metaphor, and which sections of the page should employ interactivity to reduce the reading barrier. We aligned “public understanding” with “reviewer reading habits” on the same map, iteratively polishing the “critical information channels.” For high school outreach, we treated “complex mechanisms—simple visuals—precise wording—ethical clarity” as an inseparable whole, ensuring that what was “understandable” was also “not misleading.”

In medicine, we engaged with peers of clinical background and frontline physicians in ongoing discussions around “prescription logic—indication boundaries—in-hospital pathways—at-home care—regulatory differences between Class II and Class III devices.” The consensus was clear: clinical value and regulatory feasibility must be the dual drivers. This directly influenced both our HP framework and experimental design: on one hand, we expanded our interviewees beyond “patients themselves” to include “doctors, nurses, caregivers, pharmacists, and industry practitioners”; on the other, we reserved observation points in experiments for “clinically relevant indicators,” mapping “research metrics” to “clinical metrics” in our translational notes, thereby avoiding the pitfall of “beautiful experiments that feel irrelevant in practice.”

The value of interdisciplinary collaboration lies in reducing information loss across disciplinary boundaries. When computer science partners can understand why we need certain parameters, when design partners can understand why certain metaphors are inappropriate, and when medical partners can understand why a control group is indispensable, the friction of collaboration drops dramatically. This state of “each side understanding a bit more of the other” is indispensable for moving a project from “a lab design” to “a deployable prototype.”

Img.11 Interdisciplinary cooperation

VIII. Conclusion and Reflection — Collaboration as a Continuous Ascent

Placing the entire season back into the framework of RTPNR, we see that each form of collaboration acted as a tightening spiral upward. Intra-university exchanges allowed us to illuminate solutions to homologous problems and minimize low-level errors. Regional exchanges enabled multi-directional correction across a wider radius, shortening detours. Regional initiatives transformed “we did well” into “we helped more people do well,” creating positive externalities. Long-term collaborations wrote improvements into processes, processes into templates, and templates into shared repositories, turning “growth” into inertia. CCiC and Ambassador engagements provided us with “boundaries and rhythm,” preventing the team from charging forward in self-consistency while drifting off-course. Finally, interdisciplinary collaborations built genuine bridges between engineering and clinical practice, between research and society.

More importantly, collaboration reshaped our internal work ethic. We now describe our progress less in terms of “tasks completed,” and more in terms of “uncertainty reduced, verifiability improved, reusability enhanced.” We rely less on “event photos” as evidence of collaboration, and more on “revision lists, standardized templates, control arrangements, and pathway maps” as tangible outputs. The reviewers’ central question—“What changed because of collaboration?”—can be clearly answered in every account we give.

Looking forward, OUC-Haide will continue to uphold openness, pragmatism, and reusability as our guiding principles, building Collaboration into a “sustainably maintainable capacity”: maintaining cyclical two-way cooperation with OUC-China at the university level; sustaining the shared mechanisms and tracking systems of the “Four Provinces” at the regional level; translating CCiC feedback into action baselines for the next season and aligning rapidly with Ambassadors on “rules and rhythms” at the national level; and, across disciplines, further standardizing collaboration in computer science, design, and medicine to form an interdisciplinary “onboarding kit” that new members can master within two weeks.

We firmly believe that the value of iGEM does not lie in “how fast one team can go,” but in “how far teams can go because of each other.” This is both our understanding of Collaboration in the 2025 season and our ongoing commitment for future years.