Our intrepid team of undergraduate synthetic biology students have returned from the United States, flush with the success of receiving a prestigious gold medal from the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) jamboree.

“We are ecstatic to say the least,” said team member Amit Bhattacharjee. “We are the only Australian team to win a Gold medal, so it was a very proud moment for all of us when the medal was announced. There were high fives, hugs, and even tears!”

After months of hard work, celebrations erupted in Boston and back home at news of the medal: “The results from the Jamboree event were being tweeted from 4am. I had a need to know and couldn’t sleep that night!” said the team’s chief advisor Louise Brown.

“This is a remarkable achievement by our small team of 12 CBMS330 students in a rapidly growing global competition,” she said. “There were 245 teams and more than 2500 participants in attendance.”

As in-country team support, Distinguished Professor Ian Paulsen also enjoyed the opportunity to see the field of synthetic biology flourish in this arena.

“I was very impressed with iGem,” he said. “Synthetic biology is a very exciting and vibrant field, and some of the teams showed great creativity and made significant scientific breakthroughs.”

From here, several team members hope to continue their research on this project over the summer break.

As for So You Think You Can Synthesise, the group’s science outreach program, “We hope it will be bigger and better next year,” said Louise, “with iGEM teams competing in our online reality competition from across the globe to win the title of ’The Ultimate Synthesiser‘!

The team is grateful for support given by the Biomolecular Frontiers Research Centre, the Department of Chemistry and Biomolecular Sciences and BioPlatforms Australia

“We are fortunate in our department to have a growing team of enthusiastic supporters and ex-iGEMers, who always play a major part in our success in this competition,” said Louise.

Learn more about how the team are working to address the energy crisis.