Judging/Transparency at iGEM

A note on transparency and judge affiliations

There have been some enquiries about judging in recent weeks that should be addressed.

Judges are recruited from amongst team instructors. iGEM has one of the largest communities of synthetic biology researchers in the world. Consequently, the instructors are ideally suited to assess iGEM projects.

Judges are scheduled so that there are no conflicts of interest. A judge instructor will not assess the wiki, presentation, poster and in the majority of cases, the track for their team. Instructors know how much work teams put into each project over the summer and have a good idea what is possible. This makes them the best people to assess other iGEM projects.

Last year, custom software was developed to help out the judges. This system is known as the judging ballot and contains all the categories that we use to assess iGEM teams. This system allows all judges to cast their votes independently, based on what they think about each team. It gives all the judges across all regions access to the same set of criteria and values as determined by the head judging committee. The custom voting system is based on work by Michel Balinski as described in his book: “Majority Judgment”. With an electronic vote tallying system, comes less visibility for each individual judge. Voting in iGEM is secret, but not anonymous. Judges aren’t told how other judges vote because this allows all judges to express different opinions on the performance of the teams they have observed. After voting is complete and the ballots have closed, the Head Judging Committee will ratify the results.

Finally, in keeping with ideas on transparency of evaluation, the names of the judges and their team affiliations are posted below.

iGEM HQ