First UW/UT Meeting

From 2006.igem.org

Thursday July 6th, 2006 Attendees:

<1. Stephen Davies> <2. Farshid Mirrahimi> <3. Andy Hung> <4. Herak Sikder> <5. Arash Mirrahimi> <6. Vahe Akbarian> <7.>

The meeting began at 1:10 pm. • The first discussion between the two groups (UW and UT) involved the progress of each team in terms of training their members in their wet-labs.

UW Progress: The method that the UW team has chosen is to have their two senior Masters students essentially train the interested members in the wet-labs. In addition, during the lab work they will have at least one of their Masters students present to overlook the activities in taking place and provide any assistance required.

UT Progress: The UT team has provided, so far, two training sessions to the 15 members interested in the wet-lab exercises. Although the process has taken longer time than originally expected the progress has been satisfying (Thanks to the efforts made by the administrators at UT: Steve, Farshid, Seema, and Jessica.) The next step for UT will be slightly different as randomly selected members will be trained for Session # 3, due to the huge amount of resources this session is expected to consume, and the rest of the members will be trained by the originally selected members as time goes on.

• The second discussion involved the progress of the two teams regarding their Corporate Sponsorship and Financial Support/ Needs.

UW Progress: UW team prepared and provided their Math and Biology department with a presentation in hope of a $3000 grant from each department and is expecting at least $1500 from each. Furthermore, the breakdown of their expenses tends to be opposite of that of UT’s: with material and resources for their lab being the most expensive (~$9000) and their travel expenses being the least expensive (~$2000). They have also promised to pursue local Industries for financial support in case of the need for more funding.

UT Progress: From the UT team the only attempt made directly to contact a corporate sponsor has been made by Farshid through a letter sent to Apo-Tex. However, according to Andy 2/3 of the research for finding suitable local sponsors has been done by the Finance committee. The plan is to send designated letters to some of these sponsors and either invite an assortment of their representatives for a presentation or ask them for an appointment to hear our proposal. A few potential sponsors mentioned were Microsoft Canada, Rogers, IBM Canada. The plan is to send the proposal packages to at least 10 companies by sometime next week.

• The third issue discussed in this meeting was mostly amongst the UT members however must also be considered by UW. It involves the length of a complete cycle of creating one of our bio-bricks and possible problems we may run into.

UT/UW: According to Prof. Davies the process is likely to take about two weeks, which is a considerable amount of our most precious resource: TIME. As a result of this issue it was proposed by the UW team that each team prepares part of the Celcius Project that was planed for last year. The UW team could transport their parts through courier and the UT team would put the two parts together (Done Half and Half). A few other issues involve the problem of Gambling with biology, since the bio-bricks do not always work. A proposal for that problem was to use part of the replicated samples with some reporters attached to test that particular Bio-brick, by doing so adding the new data to our iGEM lab book and finally forward them to MIT. A new committee, The Critical Design Committee, was formed through the discussion of these possible problems. It will be responsible to review last year’s Project Design and possibly improve it by using updated (and easier to replicate) parts provided by MIT. ANYONE WHO IS INTERESTED IN JIONING THIS COMMITTEE SHOULD CONTACT HERAK SIKDER.

IMPORTANT P.S. FOR UT MEMBERS Last but not least as mentioned above the last training session for UT members will done differently since it is predicted to be about 7 hours in length. Prof. Davies would like to accomplish 1 session if possible during the next week. Those who are selected will be contacted as soon as possible about the time of their session. On another note there will be another meeting between UW/UT next week so please check your e-mails and OUR WIKI more frequently for updates.

Thank you all for reading and hopefully we will see you at the next meeting.

REMEMBER TO CHECK OUR WIKI MORE FREQUENTLY.