IGEM:MIT/Administrative

Recruiting a Team

• UROP deadline is in mid-April. Want to get students long enough before this. Starting recruiting around spring break in March is too late.
• Emails appear to work much better than posters or Tech ad (perhaps the timing also matters)
• Freshman may not be on department email lists yet (not declared yet). Need another way to contact them.
• Drew recommends 5 students for a team to make it likely that there will always be at least 4 students working at any time.
• Have previous year students talk about iGEM.
• Use facebook flyers

UROP Proposal

Each student should submit their own proposal for UROP funding. The general suggested structure:

Paragraph 1 - A few sentences about what biological engineering is and the possible applications and benefits of the field.

Paragraph 2 - Description of the iGEM competition (1 team per school, number of schools, objective). Maybe give a specific example of what past teams have accomplished, for example bacterial photography (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7067/full/nature04405.html). You might want to explain that the details of the project will be fleshed out over the next month or so.

Paragraph 3 - What you will get out of the project - technical experience, teamwork, presentation, building something cool.

In total it should be about a page long with more guidelines at http://web.mit.edu/UROP. The cover letter needs to be signed by Drew and Scott Manalis (BE UROP coordinator).

It is best to have the "supervisor" for everyone be different faculty (e.g. not all under Drew).

Funding

• Have everyone apply for UROP funding.
• MIT alumni (MIT club of Boston). Drew give an evening talk at a monthly meeting could be good source of funds according to Jose.
• VC/Law firms: there are a number of firms in the life-sciences area who often give money without expecting a lot in return. Jose thought we could get ~$3000 from each of a number of companies.
• Multinational firms (e.g. IBM, HP) - pretty much the same deal as with the firms above.
• Make fundraising package, simple PDF
  1. Info./statistics on iGEM - number of schools/students etc.
  2. Context of competition, Why
  3. MIT's role as the host of the competition
  4. Future and vision of the competition
  5. Short bio's of the team
  6. Attach media items regarding the competition

See IGEM:MIT/Fundraising