At the recent International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition (iGEM), the premiere undergraduate synthetic biology competition, Wellesley's team won three awards in software design—Best Requirements Engineering, Best Eugene-Based Design, and Best SBOL (SynBio Open Language)-Based Tool—and received iGEM gold medals in both the Regional and World Championship levels. More than 190 teams, including Wellesley College, competed in the iGEM 2012 competition.

 

Wellesley's iGEM team included Kimberly Chang '12, Kathy Sirui Liu '13, Nahum Seifeselassie '13 (MIT), Wendy Xu '13, Linda Ding '14, Nicole Francisco '14, Casey Grote '14, Kara Lu '14, Veronica Lin '15, and Framingham High School student Madeleine Barowsky '14, advised by Luce Assistant Professor of Computer Science Orit Shaer of the Wellesley Computer Science Department. This past summer the Wellesley Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) lab created a suite of software tools that simplified the research process for synthetic biologists.

 

In the photo, Nicole Francisco '14 (left), Casey Grote '14 (center), and research fellow Consuelo Valdes '11 (right) are demonstrating software programs to a panel of competition judges and onlookers.

 

You can learn more about the Wellesley iGEM team, and about research in the Wellesley HCI Lab.