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The Cornell iGEM Project Team is an award-winning synthetic biology research team of 50 undergraduate students. The team comprises five subteams: Wet Lab, Product Development, Policy and Practices, Business, and Wiki/Design. The team works throughout the school year and summer to solve local and global problems related to medical applications, environmental concerns, and human and animal health. We compete against 300+ multidisciplinary teams from all around the world at the iGEM Grand Jamboree, hosted annually by the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Foundation.

What is Synthetic Biology?

Synthetic biology is the field in which scientists redesign and repurpose machinery naturally found in the biological world to achieve a man-driven goal. Some famous examples of synthetic biology that have changed the world as we know it:

iGEM Grand Jamboree

Grand Jamboree

The Grand Jamboree is the annual competition hosted by the iGEM foundation during which hundreds of teams from around the globe gather to present their projects, network with other teams and companies, and learn more about the field of synthetic biology. It is made up of multiple different events spanning the course of four days. Everything is bookended by the opening and closing ceremonies. In between these ceremonies, some activities you might find are project presentation sessions, poster sessions and workshops, along with other special events such as a career fair or a start-up showcase. In addition to participating in these activities and speaking with other teams, you also get the chance to meet representatives from sponsor companies and talk with them as well.



The Grand Jamboree means a lot to iGEM, but not just for the reason that it is our chance to show off our impressive work that we do annually. The Grand Jamboree is also a tremendous opportunity for team bonding and camaraderie. Each year after the Grand Jamboree ends and iGEM members head back from Paris to Ithaca, everyone leaves feeling as if they have gotten closer to the people around them.

Grand Jamboree


Meet Our Subteams

Wet Lab designs and creates all biological products for iGEM through genetic circuit design and synthetic biology lab techniques. Through cloning and transformation, we genetically engineer bacteria to produce proteins and perform actions that bacteria would not normally do to solve problems locally and nationally. Wet Lab also plays an essential role in testing, modeling, and presenting the project. The robust biological framework that Wet Lab develops integrates with developments from all other subteams involved in iGEM as the entire team works to create a cohesive project.

This year, we are working with yeast and using their metabolic pathways to produce ursolic acid (UA), an anticancer drug. After purifying the UA, we will encapsulate them into lipid nanoparticles to aid drug delivery for specific targets.

In previous years, some examples of wet lab projects have been engineering E. coli to detect and degrade toxins from algae (2019), creating a bacteriotherapy treatment and tracking system for cancerous malignant tumors (2020), editing bacteria to produce colorful bio-ink while uptaking carbon dioxide (2022), and more!

The product development subteam is an engineering-focused, user-centered, end-to-end development team. Our end goal is to bring iGEM's biological innovations to the real world. We apply design thinking and various engineering disciplines to explore user needs, generate a problem statement, design and prototype a solution to the problem, and create product specifications to prepare for manufacturing.

This year, the product development team plans to design and implement a Continuously-Stirred Tank Reactor (CSTR) to biomanufacture ursolic acid. Additionally, PD will be developing a novel biosensor to measure ursolic acid concentration in the reactor's outflow. In previous years, the product development subteam has built a boat with an automatic sampling system (2019), a bioreactor (2019 + 2022), planter cups that monitor and adjust oxidative conditions for the plant (2018), software that displays information about a hydroponics system in real-time to a dashboard and alerts farmers (2018), a customizable milking shell that prevents bovine mastitis (2017), an app with a built-in cell counter that also tracks trends in cow health (2017), and many more.

Policy and Practices analyzes legislation and speaks with researchers, industry professionals, medical experts and the general public to contextualize and understand the impact of our projects. The subteam also coordinates outreach and educational events such as youth mentorship programs, forums, and expos to inform and educate the public about the field of synthetic biology.

Our project this year deals with the use of ursolic acid, a compound that has been shown to have anticancer properties. Through interviews with field experts and interactions with the public, we are reminded that the people we meet always have stories to tell. We aim to share our story with them, too.

The Business Subteam deals with iGEM's finances, budgeting, recruiting and media material. We maintain an active and communicative relationship with our school and sponsors year round. We also work with the Policy and Practices subteam to spread awareness about synthetic biology at Cornell both on- and off-campus through social media and hosting special events such as fundraisers and school seminars. In recent years, the Business Subteam has been trying to facilitate a team-wide transition from a competition-based organization to a truly independent synbio developer and thinktank. We hope to further mature past projects from proofs-of-concept to significant marketable products by collaborating with prominent biotech and biochemical companies.

The Wiki subteam is mainly in charge of designing and implementing the competition website each year that showcases our project. During the spring semesters, we hold design and web development training that spans visual design, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. During this training, there are weekly/bi-weekly lessons and projects to go along with them. Over the summer, we create the design for our competition website over several iterations, and implement it in the fall!

Additionally, wiki is also in charge of maintaining and updating our project team website. From design updates to photography to adding new team members to the site, we take care of everything web related for the team!