On November 4th, US Eastern Time, the International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition (iGEM) Awards Ceremony was held in Boston. The three teams, Jiangnan-China, JNU-China and JiangnanU_China, from School of biotechnology in Jiangnan University, competed with nearly 400 teams from all over the world and won three gold medals. At the same time, team JNU-China was nominated for Best Manufacturing Project (4 nominees) and Best Education and Public Engagement (5 nominees). It was the second time for the teams from Jiangnan University to participate in iGEM. Last year, when the teams attended iGem won a gold medal and a silver medal. This year, we stood on the podium of iGem in Boston again and were nominated for special awards for the first time.
iGEM competition is an international student academic competition in the field of synthetic biology with extensive international influence. In 2019, more than 4,000 students from more than 70 countries and regions on five continents gathered in Boston to participate in the competition. The team lists include teams from world-renowned universities such as MIT, Harvard University, Yale University, Oxford University, and Stanford University. Universities such as Peking University, Tsinghua University, Zhejiang University, University of Science and Technology of China, and Fudan University also participated in the competition.
It was such great achievements for the team members. In the nearly one year of preparing the iGEM projects, the teams planned thorughly, worked hard, and cooperated with each other. Innovative project design and solid project implementation were unanimously recognized and praised by the judges. Members of the three teams come from the School of Biotechnology, the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, the School of Design, the School of Digital Media, etc. The students cooperated with each other to make full use of their own academic specialties, and optimize the projects in many aspects such as scientific experiments, mathematical modeling, posters and the design of wiki page. Wang Yaling, who has participated in the competition for the second time, exclaimed: “my experience in the competition in these two years has taught me team spirit, self reflection and a new understanding of synthetic biology. We can live in a world that we design. More importantly, when I stood on the international stage, I was more confident than before.” The three excellent projects fully demonstrated the academic strength of Jiangnan University. The outstanding performance of the team members also showed the spirit of Jiangnan students to the other participants all over the world.
In the recent years, the School of Biotechnology has established itself as a platform for first-class disciplines, which has supported students to participate in various academic competitions, encouraged students to go abroad and understand the world, and to acquire comprehensive talents with excellent scientific research, international vision and innovative spirit.
