Team from Alma College travels to iGEM competition in Paris and returns with a gold medal
iGEM is a nonprofit organization that focuses on synthetic biology, according to its website. Alma College has participated in the competition for several years.
Isabelle Conn, a senior at Alma College and a participant on the school’s iGEM team, is still feeling incredibly proud of the team’s recent win at the iGEM competition in Paris, France at the beginning of November. According to an article on Alma College’s website, Conn said winning a gold medal was “an indescribable feeling” on top of the already exciting event: “The Grand Jamboree is already an incredible event. You’re surrounded by hundreds of teams of students from all over the world who are singularly focused on making the world a better place.”
iGEM strives to help people solve problems through synthetic biology, and provides the arena for these people, problems, and teams to have their ideas, research, and hard work in the spotlight. Synthetic biology involves “mutating” organisms and turning them into something new to solve problems or issues.
The team from Alma College was this year continuing a project they call “Unraveling a Poisoned River,” which is examining a pollutant called DDT in the Pine River and developing a product they say can detect the pollutant. The team wants to be able to produce the product so that others can use it to detect pollutants in their own communities. The team found themselves successful, which likely had a huge part in their gold medal win at this year’s Grand Jamboree.
One of the competition’s judges said the team’s project was “well-executed” and served as a shining example of people working together to solve issues within their local environments.
This is not the first year Alma College has had a team participating in the competition. The school’s teams have won both silver and gold medals in the past.
MacKenzie Harwood, a senior student on the iGEM team, says that participating on the team and in the competition has given her new direction: “When I came to Alma, I loved science, but I thought my only path to turning that into a career was through the medical field. Now, I’m aiming to do a PhD program for chemistry, in the hopes of someday eliminating chronic wasting disease. I’ve discovered so many open doors through the iGEM club at Alma College. It has changed my entire career path.”
For more information about iGEM, visit its website.
For more information about Alma College, visit the school’s website.