Source: School of Life Sciences
Written by: School of Life Sciences
Edited by: Wang Dongmei

On the morning of December 16, President Xu Ningsheng came to School of Life Sciences to visit the student and instructor representatives of SYSU teams for iGEM 2013. Zhao Haoquan and Sun Mengyi, senior students from School of Life Sciences, displayed the works of SYSU-Software and SYSU-China respectively, and explained in fluent English the ideas, experiments, designs and results of their projects. Members of the two teams showed their trophies and presented self-made iGEM postcards to President Xu Ningsheng. As instructor representatives, Prof. He Xionglei from School of Life Sciences and Senior Lecturer Zhang Yongdong from School of Mathematics and Computational Science introduced their experience in instructing the students.

President Xu Ningsheng congratulated the students on their achievements and communicated with the students about the source of their ideas, their experience during the competition, how they contacted their instructors and their plans for future development. He said that SYSU puts special emphasis on student participation in top-notch international competitions and works hard to provide full support. He hoped that the schools and functional departments can create more opportunities to encourage undergraduate students to participate in high level science and technology competitions, and cultivate more talents with innovative abilities.

The International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition (iGEM) was established in MIT in 2003, and has developed into a top-notch international competition in Synthetic Biology for university students. At the iGEM 2013 World Championship Jamboree, SYSU-Software team was awarded the Best Software Project, the grand prize in the software division, as well as a gold medal. SYSU-China team received Best Wiki and entered the Finalists, winning the 2nd Runner-Up in the Overgraduate division. This is another historic breakthrough since SYSU teams participated in the competition, and it is the best result of the Asia Regionals in the iGEM 2013 World Championship Jamboree.