Baguettes and Bacteria: Stuyvesant Students Go to Paris For the iGEM Competition

From October 23 to 26, a group of students from several schools in the New York area, including some from Stuyvesant, went to Paris, France, to compete in the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Competition. Teams worked to create a project that used synthetic biology to solve a real-life problem. The only team composed of New York high school students, NYC-Empire-State, qualified to go to Paris after working for nearly a year. Over 400 teams from 45 different countries convened before a panel of over 400 judges. There, NYC-Empire-State presented their project, earning a silver medal and other prizes. Most importantly, they worked incredibly hard on their project together, allowing them to bond, learn more about biology, and overall have an amazing experience that they will never forget.

Though several students from Stuyvesant participated, the iGEM competition was not a school sponsored event. In fact, though the NYC-Empire-State team naturally hailed from the city’s metropolitan area, a few members of the team came from extremely far locations: New Jersey, Georgia, Florida, and even Uzbekistan. Though everyone met each other through a shared tutoring program called Epiphany, different team members heard about the competition from different sources. “I found out about the competition because my sister participated in it two years prior and I knew I would be interested. I was involved in it from the start, but we have some students on the team who had been on a past team the year before,” senior Alexa Seltzer, one of the overall team leaders, described in an email interview. Connected by their love of synthetic biology and interest in the competition, they all agreed to work together.

The main goal of the iGEM competition, which started in 2004, is to invent solutions to problems faced by society, ranging from a sustainable food supply for long-duration space travel to proteins focusing on targeting tumor-associated microbes. After coming together, the NYC-Empire-State team had to decide on an issue to base their project around. “At first, we all proposed our own ideas after doing research on our own. The topic can be anything but must relate to synthetic biology and there are some general categories (healthcare, agriculture, biotherapeutics, infectious diseases, etc.). Then we narrowed down the ideas, considering what would be most feasible within our wet lab time and what could easily be marketable,” Seltzer described. In the end, they focused on the issue of chronic wounds. “Our project was basically engineering a living hydrogel with bacteria inside of it. And the bacteria are targeting S. aureus and chronic wounds. S. aureus is a pathogenic bacterial infection commonly referred to as MRSA—Methicillin Resistant [Staphylococcus] Aureus,” Seltzer explained in an in-person interview.

This explanation may not make much sense to those outside of the world of biology and science. As a part of the Human Services team, which worked to explain the project to outside services, junior Joanne Huang helped translate Seltzer’s description of the project into non-technical terms. “Our project targets wounds that have infections. And basically we created this band-aid out of something called a hydrogel, which is like a new innovative type of wound covering. We inserted bacteria in there so that the bacteria would be able to detect your infectious bacteria and kill them,” Huang explained.

The Human Services team was just one of several sub-teams within the overall NYC-Empire-State team that worked as a part of this competition. Unlike other biology competitions, iGEM goes beyond just the actual science. “Other science competitions are very purely focused on the lab work. And iGEM has that entrepreneurship and that human component,” Seltzer explained. Teams are supposed to make the product one that can actually be implemented into society, meaning they have to look at business models and marketing strategies as well as just the biology, a big part of their evaluation. 

The competition awards 19 Special Prizes, including Best Model, Best Presentation, Best Sustainable Development Impact, and more. NYC-Empire-State was able to get top five for two of these Special Prizes: Best Entrepreneurship and Best Integrated Human Practices. The team put a lot of effort into making sure they did well in these sides of the competition, just as important as the actual biology. “I think our team did so well in Entrepreneurship because we organized a very long and well thought-out business plan that considered the limitations of our product, the strength of the market, and the best exit strategy that aligned with our goals to make the product affordable and accessible,” Seltzer theorized. Winning these awards felt especially gratifying because of the hard work that they put into these aspects of the competition. “These awards especially show how we considered every aspect of actually making this product into a reality,” Seltzer continued. 

 Because of the way this competition is structured, different people on the team work on different aspects of the project. “The team is basically composed of a lot of different sub teams. So you have, for example, Entrepreneurship, Hardware, Software, Bio, Human Practices. So not everyone is [working] on everything. [...] Each subgroup is tasked with writing their portion of the website. Hardware/software did code and work on prototypes. [The] bio team worked on research and literature reviews to conceptualize the project, as well as the actual lab procedures,” Seltzer described. However, she made sure to emphasize that the team ultimately collaborates to deliver a final product. “It's pretty much everyone working together,” she continued.

Senior and co-leader of Human Practices and Education Ayla Irshad highlighted how the sub-team model reflects the real-world innovation landscape. “Everything's interdisciplinary [...] If you think about all the super big drug companies [...] they all have marketing teams, they have teams that figure out how [the product] actually impacts the person,” Irshad said. Especially in such a STEM-oriented competition, having Human Practices and Education teams was essential to making the product more digestible for the average person.

The sub-teams of Human Practices and Education, specifically, focused on spreading awareness about the product. “The Human Practices and Education side are the ways that people actually get interested in thinking about what you are even making,” Irshad continued. As part of this work, the Education team created a picture book to explain their wound care product to children.

Though the Human Practices and Education teams were both focused on spreading information about the project, they were targeted at slightly different groups. “The Human Practices team works to interview stakeholders. This can mean doctors, patients, investors, regulators, lawyers, etc. The goal of this is to speak to people who would use the product or benefit from the product and see how it can be feasibly implemented into institutions and society as a whole. The Education team serves to actually educate people about the product or about synthetic biology and this is usually through camps with younger students,” Seltzer described. 

Huang explained further what the Human Services sub-team does. “I learned how to interact with both students, but also just people outside of our iGEM team. We did street interviews, which was pretty cool [...] I got to explain what infectious wounds are [for] our project,” Huang explained. For her, learning the nuances of how STEM companies create their products, especially from the human outreach side, made the entire experience valuable. “I think experiences like that, it exposes you to what companies and startups actually do in the world, instead of just being a one off project for school,” Huang said. 

The process, which began in December 2023, wasn’t all smooth sailing. “We had challenges in our bio, so one of our plasmids we couldn't develop,” Seltzer said. Additionally, the fact that the team included students from other schools and states posed some issues. “We also have a lot of students on our team who are international or from other states, so it's a little bit hard coordinating with them,” Seltzer continued. 

Huang expressed similar feelings about the difficulty of working with students outside of Stuyvesant. “I think the team dynamics were difficult because there were obviously some kids who we never really got to meet because they were in different areas,” Huang explained. However, given the difficult circumstances, the team leaders were able to manage their team well and keep everyone on the same page. “The [team leaders] were so organized, and they were also just so hard working. But they made sure that everybody who was new was able to sort of understand what's going on. They held informational sessions every other week so that we could catch up if we fell behind. So I feel like the team was pretty relaxed,” Huang described. 

However, the fact that there were students from different schools also made the project fun. “Seeing Stuy kids every day [or] in every project of your life is not always something that you want to see, but that's why I really liked iGEM. [...] Now I wasn't just with Stuy kids, I was also with kids from Brooklyn Tech [and] kids from Hunter,” Huang explained. In the end, the team was able to bond well, something incredibly important for a task as difficult and time consuming as the one that they chose to take on.

For the biology side of the project, NYC-Empire-State had some mentors, allowing them the resources and instruction critical to the creation of their project. “We were mentored by some college students and biology researchers, such as Dr. Matteo Da Ros, as well as our lab Principal Investigator, Dr. David Frank,” Seltzer said. They also got to use an actual lab, giving them the space and materials to engineer plasmids and transform their bacteria with them. “We toured a couple different labs and ultimately decided upon working with the [New York University] lab, as a past team had worked at this lab before,” Seltzer said. 

Beyond creating the products, working with other students, conducting research, and marketing their product to the world, the actual trip to Paris was also a valuable learning experience as students got to interact with experts in various fields. “That’s what I really love about iGEM, we got to talk [about the project] to so many people that are so renowned in their fields. It was so cool to hear their insight [...] they were just so professional and knew what they were doing so well,” Irshad said. When the team got feedback on their project, they were able to learn from their mistakes and see what could be improved, an incredibly valuable learning experience. 

Adding on to this, Seltzer explained that through the iGEM competition, she was able to make many connections, pivotal in such a small and exclusive industry like synthetic biology. “They have a lot of startups there for you to kind of network with and learn about. [...] I advise aspiring competitors to develop good relationships with stakeholders from meetings (remember it's more than a competition, it's also networking with very accomplished people who are trying to help you!),” Seltzer described in her email interview. Professional benefits, in addition to the fun of visiting a beautiful city, was what made the experience in Paris so incredible for students. 

The iGEM competition was an amazing experience, giving many students from Stuyvesant and around the world the opportunity to collaborate on innovative solutions to society’s problems. Through their non-traditional interdisciplinary approach, students with many interests were able to contribute and build skills and relationships that will last a lifetime. And maybe, on top of all of that, they were able to grab a croissant too.