An iGEM of a project

William Tibbits, biology teacher, explained: “iGEM is an international competition set up for postgraduate research groups to carry out some synthetic biology to solve real world issues. Since then, it has grown and this year had 250 teams from about 50 countries competing. The City of London team was the only school entry from Europe. Everyone is judged according to the same criteria. The team also won the 'iGEMERS award' which was voted for by all of the participants. The really impressive thing, I think, is that the uni teams all have access to high tech labs, where as our lot were trying to do the same stuff in a school lab. It is also almost entirely student-led and so they deserve loads of praise.”