iGem 2018 Gold Medal Award

Team wins award for Best Therapeutics Project 

The Oxford iGEM team 2018

The 2018 Undergraduate Oxford iGEM team have just returned from Boston with a Gold medal and the award for Best Therapeutics Project along with three other award nominations. The iGEM competition gives interdisciplinary teams of students the opportunity to push the boundaries of synthetic biology whilst tackling everyday issues facing the world. This year more than 300 teams from over 40 different countries spent the summer combining wet lab experimental work with modelling and human practices to deliver on their project goals, before convening in Boston to present their data to over 3000 people and be judged on their performance. The Oxford team worked on miBiome, a project to develop a novel treatment for Inflammatory Bowel Disease (http://2018.igem.org/Team:Oxford).

The team, made up entirely of first and second year students, consisted of five Biochemists; Bhuvana Sudarshan (Oriel), Jhanna Kryukova (St Hugh's), Joe Windo (Lady Margaret Hall), Jon Stocks (Univ) and Max Taylor (St Hilda's), two Engineers; Adrian Kozhevnikov (Magdalen) and Arman Karshenas (Balliol), a Medic; Ellie Beard (St Anne's), a Chemist; Karandip Saini (Queen's) and a Biological Scientist; Laurel Constanti Crosby (St Catherine's). Our congratulations go to all of the team for a hugely successful project and their achievements representing the University. The team picked up as many awards and nominations as all the 13 other UK teams put together, reflecting the strength of the science base at an undergrad level within our University.

Judith Armitage

5th November 2018