WILLIAMSBURG — Six undergraduates recently represented William & Mary at the International Genetically Engineered Machine competition in Paris, earning a gold medal for their project Aquarius, which harnessed the power of synthetic biology to tackle pressing water-related environmental challenges.
According to William & Mary, iGEM is the world’s largest synthetic biology organization and student competition. Each year, college and high school teams design, build, and test biological systems using DNA-based “parts” to solve real-world problems. Teams then present their work to international judges and peers at the annual Jamboree held in Paris.
Almost 7,000 students from over 50 countries competed this year.
This year’s W&M team was made up of seniors Rebecca Zheleznyak, Xinyu Hu, and Vandana Kalithkar, juniors Olabisi Bashorun and Sean Emmett, and sophomore Madeline Eibner-Gebhardt. The team of six and its student advisor was the smallest of the 421 teams in the competition.
According to faculty advisor Margaret Saha, a Chancellor Professor in Applied Science, a small team meant the students had to produce not only lab research, but also software, mathematical models, public education materials, safety documentation and web-based project wikis that detail every stage of their work.
“There were no benefits to being small,” Saha said with a laugh. “It was an extraordinary challenge, but the students were beyond fantastic — they worked longer, harder, more efficiently, and above all, smarter than ever before.”
Adding to that difficulty was the project taken on this year.
“We wanted to incorporate something that is personal to William & Mary and to us, and since this year was the “Year of the Environment,” we started thinking about it and realized that one of the four pillars of William & Mary’s Vision 2026 is water,” explained Zheleznyak. “We wanted to center our project around how we can implement some bioengineered constructs in real-world aquatic environments.”
Zheleznyak said she is integrating iGEM into her honors thesis, which is an opportunity to build off their work with the eventual goal of getting published.
“[iGEM] provides such a big opportunity for undergraduates to experience research firsthand, to think of a project, execute it, and then present it in front of so many people at the Jamboree,” said Zheleznyak. “To be able to create something from scratch that can actually contribute to the field as an undergraduate is an incredible opportunity upon itself, and I’m so glad that we have that at the school.”
While just a sophomore, Eibner-Gebhardt doesn’t think she will try to compete on next year’s team as she is eager to see her iGEM work to completion and publication.
“I have so much data I’d like to analyze from this year’s project,” explained Eibner-Gebhardt. “I don’t want drop that, I want to keep going with what I have because I think there are so many cool topics that we can follow up on.”
W&M highlighted the iGEM program’s interdisciplinary nature, drawing on students from across fields, which this year included biology, computer science, data science, physics, neuroscience and applied mathematics.
“I’ve always seen that iGEM has so many different majors in their members, so I joined because I love the interdisciplinary aspect of it,” said Bashorun. “It’s just great that [iGEM] is right here in William & Mary, which was a drawing point to why I came here, opportunities like this for undergraduates to actually do research and science.”
William & Mary noted it has a growing reputation in iGEM.
“One woman approached us and said, ‘oh you’re William & Mary’, like she expected a lot from us, so yeah I think we do have a bit of a reputation now after the past few years, but I think that’s a good thing,” said Eibner-Gebhardt.
“We had people come up to us in Paris saying they modeled their website on ours from last year,” added Zheleznyak. “It was surreal to see how well-known the William & Mary iGEM team is internationally.”
