Team:Bielefeld-Germany/strategic-process

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Revision as of 09:57, 18 August 2011

Strategic Process Biotechnology 2020+

Jonas presenting our posters

The audience, © F. Dahnke/BIOCOM

Timo giving an interview

Interesting talks, © F. Dahnke/BIOCOM

The German [http://www.bmbf.de/en/index.php Federal Ministry of Education and Research] manages the [http://www.biotechnologie2020plus.de/BIO2020/Navigation/DE/root.html Strategic Process Biotechnology 2020+]. Together with research organizations and universities the vision is to develop the next generation of biotechnological processes as well as initiate their realization. Apart from funding of research projects, expert talks on the topics medicine, energy, environment and industry are arranged. Every year a [http://www.biotechnologie2020plus.de/BIO2020/Navigation/DE/root,did=128308.html highlight congress] is organized, where representatives from academia, industry and politics meet to discuss the future of biotechnology. This year, parts of the iGEM Team Bielefeld were invited to actively participate and present posters about the 2010 and 2011 projects.

The event began with the address of welcome by State Secretary [http://www.biotechnologie2020plus.de/BIO2020/Navigation/DE/root,did=128308.html Dr. Helge Braun], followed by keynote speeches of industry representatives. Afterwards it was time for a coffee break and the poster session. Last year’s Freiburg and Weimar-Heidelberg Arts team as well as this year’s Potsdam team were also there so we could team up after the poster session. The iGEM team Bielefeld was able to present a poster of our 2010 MARSS (Modulated Acetosyringone Receptor Sensor System) project and a poster of our 2011 Cellfree S-layer Based Bisphenol A Biosensor.

As the congress was in the beginning of July, we did not present any results of our 2011 project, but showed what our concept and idea is. A lot of people were interested in the concepts of Synthetic Biology, iGEM in general, ethical discussions and the shown projects. Inspired by our posters we had some interesting talks and debates with representatives from academia, industry and politics. The expert audience showed a lot of interest, often asked for more detailed information or even suggested new and different applications for our cell free biosensors. Our project raised a lot of interest, because there was a big focus on cell free systems at the conference, so we fitted in quite well. These are supposed to be one of the visionary next steps in biotechnology. Apart from cell free systems, the strategic process points out the current trends in biotechnology. These are Systems biology, Bioinformatics, Synthetic Biology and BioBricks, as well as Nanobiotechnology, especially self assembling molecules. Witpout knowing this when choosing our project, this shows that we are working on an state of the art and innovative project.

The poster session was followed by a panel discussion and workshops on the future innovations of biotechnology. During the breaks and workshops we were able to further get in contact with the other participants and promote iGEM. Additionally to the whole scientific exchange, it was realy nice to get in touch and share some experience with the other iGEM teams.

For the iGEM team Bielefeld the Strategic Process conference was another great experience, to promote our project and to get in touch with a lot of new people. This event was special, because the participants were mainly composed of an influential expert audience. Additionally we gave an interview for [http://www.biotechnologie.de/BIO/Navigation/DE/Service/Videos/biotechnologie-tv-gesamt.html biotechnologie.tv], which will be broadcasted on August 22nd.

Posters we presentet at the Strategic Process Biotechnology 2020+