Team:BGU Israel/Continuity

We wanted to make sure that the process of outreach and education has only just begun, by building the foundation for the next generation of iGEM-BGU teams. We also want to help Israeli teams from other universities make their first steps towards competing in next year's iGEM competition.

1. To create a base of knowledge and support for the future, we recruited three faculty members as instructors for this year's project.
2. One of our mentors, Ph.D. student Liron Amir, is the lecturer of the department’s genetic engineering course, and she offered an extra credit contest to all of the students to think of ideas for next year's team. The contest will be repeated in next year’s course, creating continuity and awareness of iGEM, and fostering creativity among all of the biotechnology students.
3. We presented our project to three Deans, of the Faculties of Engineering, Natural Sciences, and Health Sciences, and received their support.
4. We presented our project and received official support and acknowledgement from the President of our university, Professor Rivka Carmi, and the Rector.
5. We received support from the Israeli Ministry of Science, which officially acknowledged the iGEM competition and its importance, supported our project with a generous donation, and expressed interest in continuing to support Israeli iGEM teams in coming years.
6. We raised awareness about the competition among students and faculty in a number of different venues: a lecture to the Biotechnology Engineering department in a departmental seminar (click here to see the video), a lecture to the second-year Biotechnology Engineering undergrad students, creating a cool iGEM art gallery on campus, and participating in the university’s family-oriented Science Night). We have also publicized the iGEM competition and our team through the university's newsletter, the Student Union newsletter, and the university’s marketing department. We estimate that at this point, the vast majority of students and faculty from the university have heard about the iGEM competition and this year's project.
7. Our fundraising goal included raising seed funds for next year's iGEM-BGU team. (10,000$-40,000$, depending on our world championship qualification). To make sure that the funds are saved for next year’s team, we have created a special iGEM account in the university. We are pleased to report that we have achieved and even surpassed our fundraising goals.
8. We have recruited a Ph.D. student and two undergrad outstanding Biotechnology students to be observers and helpers in this year's project, in the hope that they will "carry the torch" to the next year.
9. We have constructed a recruitment system for next year's project, starting from instructors, through graduate students to undergrads. Ideally, next year's team should be up and running by the start of spring semester 2014.
10. • Every member of our team will fill out a questionnaire at the end of the competition to get feedback on how the team functioned and on possible areas of improvement or change. We also intend to be in touch with next year's teams, not only from BGU but also from other universities in Israel that are already interested in opening iGEM teams of their own, to make sure they learn from our mistakes and experience!