iGEM
October 19, 2015
By Emma Alexander, Honors Communications Intern
iGEM, which stands for international genetically engineered machines, is a student organization at Purdue. Members recently attended an international event with iGEM teams from around the globe. Now, following this large event, the leadership of the team is changing, but the president who will be leaving office, Mark Aronson, was kind enough to share some of his experience as well as general information about iGEM. In Mark’s words,
iGEM is a worldwide synthetic biology competition that was founded at MIT in 2004. Since then, it has grown to over 280 teams in high school, undergraduate, and overgraduate divisions. Purdue iGEM is a campus organization that houses the Purdue iGEM team. Along with training members in the techniques of synthetic biology and competing in the iGEM competition, Purdue iGEM acts as a general interest genetics club, hosting screenings of genetics related movies and doing general synthetic biology outreach. New students are welcome to get involved at any time, but are particularly encouraged now as we are turning over the board following the Jamboree. The iGEM Jamboree is part conference, part competition, part synthetic biology celebration, and more than the sum of those parts. Thousands of students from all over the world converge on the Hynes Convention Center in Boston for a four day series of presentations, sessions, career fair, and social activities. While there, you attend talks from other teams about their project, present your research in the form of a twenty minute presentation and poster session, constantly meet and network with other iGEM teams, and also experience the city of Boston.
Purdue’s iGEM team recently attended the Jamboree themselves and were able to participate in all of the exciting activities that took place there.
Mark has been the president of Purdue’s iGEM team for the past year, and a lot of responsibility and work has gone into that role. When asked about his experience as president, Mark shared,
Being president was a wild, year-long ride. As president, I was responsible for creating a vision for the organization and developing a path to see that vision become reality. Along with being the face of the organization and running meetings, I acted as a representative for iGEM at both Ag and Bio engineering department club president meetings as well as the Purdue Engineering President's Council meetings. With the help of my vice president and treasurer, I met with our sponsoring administrators, including Provost Dutta and Associate Deans of the Colleges of Engineering, Science, and Agriculture. I was also in charge of directing the research project over the summer. I most enjoyed the vision development aspect of the role. I love thinking about the future of what an organization could be and then working tirelessly to see that vision carried out.
Although it is surely a bittersweet experience for Mark to be leaving this role he clearly cares about so much, there is also great excitement that come with welcoming a new group of leaders. With this new leadership in place, now is a great time for interested students to explore this opportunity a little more. iGEM meetings are on Tuesdays and Thursday at 7:30 in Lilly 3118. Anyone with an interest in genetics, engineering, technology, and the future is welcome to join at any time. This is truly a great opportunity to be involved and have an influence beyond West Lafayette, and all of the members are very passionate about what they are doing. To learn more about the larger organization of iGEM, you can visit http://igem.org/Main_Page for more information.
