Team:Newcastle/Edinburgh trip

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On the 23rd and 24th of June 2009 Newcastle attended the UK iGEM team meetup in Edinburgh, Scotland. The event was hosted by Edinburgh University, a fellow iGEM competitor.

The trip

Day one

Not all of the team were able to attend, but 6 students, one advisor and two instructors met at Newcastle Railway Station at 10:30am to catch the 10:59am train to Edinburgh. The reserved seats were on two different coaches, but due to the number of free seats, we were able to sit together.

Upon arriving in Edinburgh we had lunch in a restaurant across from Edinburgh Dungeon, and then proceeded to walk to Edinburgh University's Informatics Forum building on Crichton Road. Firstly, Alistair Elfick and Randy Rettberg gave an introductory presentation about Synthetic Biology and iGEM.

All of the students were put into mixed groups and asked to design and build a remote control buggy which was to collect a package of waste material and navigate a course. Our team member Goksel was on the winning team.

Dinner a buffet was at the Royal Society of Edinburgh. The Newcastle students then went to their accommodation for the night, Pollock Halls, a student hall of residence/summer hotel, to drop off their bags before joining some of the other teams at a pub, All Bar One.

Day two

The second day in Edinburgh began with breakfast provided by Pollock Hall, this was just a basic English/Scottish breakfast. Morgan went to the instructor's hotel to practice her presentation. We all checked out of the hotel before getting a taxi back to Edinburgh University. The day of presentations began - Chris French gave an overview of BioBricks, Morgan Taschuk gave an insightful view into her experiences on the Newcastle team in 2008, and Bruce Logan gave a talk on Microbial Fuel Cells. Coffee was again provided.

Lunch and a short walk outside came before a mixed team activities on the social and ethical aspects of synthtic biology by Emma Frow and Jane Calvert. Finally it was time for each UK team that was in attendace to give a short presentation about their hopeful project for the summer. Newcastle were the forth team to talk, and Jess and Mathew did us proud.

The students ended the trip with a little bit of sightseeing in the afternoon, going to places such as Edinburgh Castle, before heading to Edinburgh train station to catch the 5:30 train back to Newcastle. This train was more crowded, and we were split up into two coaches. We arrived back in Newcastle and went our separate ways at around 7 in the evening.

The team appeared to enjoy the trip, and found it to be a useful experience.