SynBio Student Symposium 2011

Hi everyone,

We are the Rosser Lab and we are delighted to be blogging on the Life Science Scotland Website. We intend to use this blog spot to update you on some of the exciting synthetic biology-related activity emanating from the lab of Dr Susan Rosser here at the University of Glasgow. This first blog will be a quick introduction to some of us and how we came to be blogging here via the SynBio Student Symposium.

My name is Christine Merrick and I started my PhD last September. Around this time I was lucky enough to attend a conference held by the SynBio Standards Network in Edinburgh with some other members of our group. At the mention that some funds may be available from the network, Dr Louise Horsfall , a postdoc in our lab, asked me if I would like to join her in organising a conference at the University of Glasgow and I agreed. Some months later we enlisted the help of second year PhD student, David Houston, and, somehow, we coordinated the SynBio Student Symposium in April 2011  (www.SynBioStudentSymposium.com).

Our aim was to educate students and early career researchers about the interplay between different disciplines in synthetic biology and the impact this will have on science in the UK. We started by securing funding from the SynBio Standards Network, Scottish Enterprise, Nexxus, SULSA, Syngenta, the University of Glasgow and donations from several of the synthetic biology networks. We then contacted our fantastic speakers (Travis Bayer, Rainer Breitling, Jon Cooper, Jamie Davies, Ben Davis, Alistair Elfick, Jim Haseloff, Dafydd Jones and members from the St. Andrews iGEM team 2010) and workshop facilitators (Emma Frow, Jane Calvert, Kate Bulpin and Heather Lowrie) who graciously got on board. We selected fourteen students or early career researchers to present their work as posters and two to speak from abstracts submitted. Over 200 people registered for the event from disciplines including chemistry, engineering, plant science, molecular, cell and systems biology and social science at establishments from all over the UK.

As a result of the SynBio Student Symposium several interdisciplinary and inter-establishment collaborations have been formed, including some very exciting ones involving the Rosser Lab. Attendees left very positive feedback indicating how much they enjoyed the event and their enthusiasm for synthetic biology. We were also pleased to have in attendance the University of Glasgow’s 2011 iGEM team who are now bursting with fun ideas and ready to communicate synthetic biology to the masses. 

"Great range of speakers, welcoming atmosphere, inspiring"

"...an amazing array of speakers and I was astonished by how much I could learn from the variety of different perspectives that were represented."

We would like to take this opportunity to, again, thank all of our funders, speakers, workshop facilitators, poster presenters and attendees for making the event so much fun and such a success.

Until next time, it’s been a pleasure,

Christine