CommunityBricks and AlumniGEM

At SB5.0, the Cornell, Brown-Stanford, Arizona State, University of Panama, and UTP Panama iGEM teams gathered iGEMers together to discuss two initiatives: a global outreach/ human practices collaboration and the formation of the iGEM Alumni Association.

Since SB5.0, many iGEM teams have come together to create [http://openwetware.org/wiki/IGEM_Outreach/ CommunityBricks], a resource of outreach and human practices activities for future iGEM teams to use and add to. We envision that this resource--soon to be a part of iGEM.org--will help iGEM teams promote synthetic biology to the global community.

Additionally, ASU has been collaborating with iGEM HQ and other iGEM teams to create iGEM's alumni association! We all assisted Brown-Stanford iGEM in creating a fabulous networking tool, the [http://alumni.brownigem.com/ AlumniGEM forums], which contains alumni profiles and discussion platforms. And check out the beginnings of the AlumniGEM website, a collaboration between iGEM teams and iGEM HQ to keep alumni connected to iGEM and synthetic biology.

Here is what ASU iGEM has done specifically to make these ideas into reality:

• Helped Initiate the outreach/human practices collaboration at SB5.0
• Along with Cornell and Brown-Stanford, created a collaboration invitation letter--inviting teams to contribute to CommunityBricks and the AlumniGEM forums--and distributed it to all 176 iGEM teams
• Created an uploaded a Synthetic biology curriculum, [http://openwetware.org/wiki/IGEM_Outreach:Exploring_Synthetic_Biology Exploring Synthetic Biology], tailored towards high school students along with an introductory presentation for iGEM teams to use.
• Added multimedia links and other resources to the CommunityBricks website.

iGEM Outreach Collaboration Committee (CollabCom)

• Madeline Grade, Arizona State
• Nisarg Patel, Arizona State
• Jovian Yu, Brown-Stanford
• Max Song, Brown-Stanford
• Alyssa Henning, Cornell University
• Natasha Gomez, Panama University
• Ann Bui, UQ-Australia
• Grimaldo Elias, UTP Panama

Additional Collaborators, CommunityBricks

• Hokkaido University
• TU Munich
• University of British Columbia

We thank the following organizations for providing links to their outreach websites and offering suggestions for future outreach and human practices collaborations:

• [http://www.genspace.org/ Genspace] (Columbia-Cooper iGEM/ NYC iGEM)
• Dr. Natalie Kuldell (MIT Biological Engineering/ [http://www.biobuilder.org/ BioBuilder])

Additional Collaborators, AlumniGEM

We thank the following teams for representing AlumniGEM at iGEM regional jamborees:

• UQ-Australia: iGEM Asia
• Cambridge: iGEM Europe

And special thanks to iGEM HQ Assistant Director Meagan Lizarazo for advising CollabCom on integrating CommunityBricks and AlumniGEM into the iGEM online community.