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).
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
- Info./statistics on iGEM - number of schools/students etc.
- Context of competition, Why
- MIT's role as the host of the competition
- Future and vision of the competition
- Short bio's of the team
- Attach media items regarding the competition