International Genetically Engineered Machine

International competition

iGEM

Date(s)	October, 23 - 26 (2024)
Frequency	Annually
Venue	Paris Expo Porte de Versailles, France (2022~) Hynes Convention Center, Boston, United States (2014-2019) MIT, Boston, United States (2003-2013)
Location(s)	Paris, France (2022~) Boston, Massachusetts, United States (2003-2019) With additional events worldwide
Inaugurated	2003
Most recent	2023 2022
iGEMers	Annually: 10 000+ participants, 400+ teams Since 2003: 80 000+ participants, 4500+ teams
Organised by	iGEM Foundation
Website	igem.org

The iGEM (International Genetically Engineered Machine) competition is a worldwide synthetic biology competition that was initially aimed at undergraduate and 'overgraduate' university students, but has since expanded to include divisions for high school students, entrepreneurs, and community laboratories. iGEM is presented as "the heart of synthetic biology" - educating the next generation of leaders and workforce of the field. Since its inception in 2003, over 80 000 students from over 65 countries have been trained in the responsible, safe and secure use of synthetic biology.

The iGEM Competition is a flagship program of the iGEM Foundation - an independent, non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of synthetic biology, education and competition, and the development of an open, collaborative, and cooperative community. Aside from the competition, iGEM has established many initiatives and programs to support the future growth of synthetic biology throughout the world: iGEM Community, iGEM Technology, iGEM Responsibility, iGEM Startups, and iGEM Leagues.

Competition details

Student teams are given a kit (so called ‘Distribution Kit’) of standard, interchangeable parts (so called 'BioBricks') at the beginning of the summer from the Registry of Standard Biological Parts comprising various genetic components such as promoters, terminators, reporter elements, and plasmid backbones. Working at their local laboratories over the summer, they use these parts and new parts of their own design to build biological systems and operate them in living cells.

The teams are free to choose a project, which can build on previous projects or be new to iGEM. Successful projects produce cells that exhibit new and unusual properties by engineering sets of multiple genes together with mechanisms to regulate their expression.

At the end of the summer, the teams add their new BioBricks to the Parts Registry and the scientific community can build upon the expanded set of BioBricks in the next year.

At the annual ‘iGEM Jamboree’ teams from all continents meet in Paris for a scientific expo event and conference where they present their projects to each other and to a scientific jury of ~400 judges. The judges award medals and special prizes to the teams and select a ‘Grand Prize Winner’ team as well as ‘Runner-Up’ teams in each division (High School, Undergraduate and Overgraduate).

Awards & Judging in the iGEM competition

Each participant receives a participating certificate (see fig. below) and has the possibility to earn medals (bronze, silver and gold; see fig. below) with their team depending on different criteria that the team fulfilled in the competitions. For a bronze medal it is for example necessary to submit a new part to the Parts Registry, for a silver medal the team is required to document the functionality of a part and for a gold medal it is finally, among other criteria, necessary to obtain a proof-of-principle for the team's project.

In 2016 as an example, 300 teams participated in the competition from which 37% received a gold medal, 25% a silver medal, 26% a bronze medal and 12% were not awarded a medal.

In each division, the best performance in a certain aspect of the competition is honored with special prizes. The special prizes include: 'Best Project' in the respective categories (app. 10 categories), 'Best Art & Design', 'Best Hardware', 'Best Measurement', 'Best Software', 'Best Human Practices', 'Best Model', 'Best New Part', 'Best Poster', 'Best Presentation', 'Best Wiki' and others depending on the competition year. Together with individual certificates, the teams are given glass trophies for each special prize (see fig. below).

From all teams in a respective division, a number of finalists are selected (1 to 6, depending on year and division) and allowed to present their project again in front of all Jamboree participants. From the presented projects all judges select the winner of this year's iGEM competition, the Grand Prize Winner team, who are then awarded a big metal Lego-brick (see fig. below). The winning team may keep this challenge trophy for a year until it gets awarded to the next 'Grand Prize Winner'. Participants of a 'Grand Prize Winner' team are also given challenge coins of the respective year (see fig. below).

Participant's certificate
Gold medal sticker

History of the competition

Growth of the annual iGEM Jamboree
Year	No. of participants
2004	31(5 teams)
2005	125(13 teams)
2006	723(32 teams)
2007	777(54 teams)
2008	1,248(88 teams)
2009	1,840(113 teams)
2010	2,327(128 teams)
2011	2,586(165 teams)
2012	3,696(190 teams)
2013	4,027(215 teams)
2014	4,515(245 teams)
2015	5,018(280 teams)
2016	4,432(300 teams)
2017	5,386(310 teams)
2018	5,790(340 teams)
2019	6,375(353 teams)
2020	4,800(249 teams)
2021	7,314(350 teams)
2022	7,757(356 teams)
2023	8,541(390 teams)
2024	9,507(410 teams)

iGEM developed out of student projects conducted during MIT's Independent Activities Periods in 2003 and 2004. Later in 2004, a competition with five teams from various schools was held. In 2005, teams from outside the United States took part for the first time. Since then iGEM has continued to grow, with 130 teams entering in 2010. Randy Rettberg, an engineer who has worked for technology companies including Apple, Sun and BBN, is the founder and president of iGEM.

Because of this increasing size, in the years 2011 - 2013 the competition was split into three regions: Europe, the Americas, and Asia (though teams from Africa and Australia also entered via "Europe" and "Asia" respectively). Regional jamborees occurred during October; and some subset of teams attending those events were selected to advance to the World Championship at MIT in November.

In January 2012 the iGEM Foundation was spun out of MIT as an independent non-profit organization located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. The iGEM Foundation supports scientific research and education through operating the iGEM competition. The same year, iGEM expanded into having not only the Collegiate division, but also competitions for entrepreneurs and high school students.

For their tenth anniversary, iGEM added new tracks to the existing ones: Art & Design, Community Labs, Entrepreneurship, Measurement, Microfluidics, Policy & Practice, and Software. Although Entrepreneurship and Software were tracks in previous years, in 2014 they were made more distinct in terms of their judging requirements. Furthermore, in 2014 iGEM did not have regional jamborees, but instead hosted a giant jamboree so every team could participate in one conference in Cambridge unlike in previous years where only the regional finalists were brought to Cambridge.

The iGEM Jamborees for 2020 and 2021 were held online, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Starting in 2022, the event was redesigned and rebranded to the iGEM Grand Jamboree, held in the Paris Expo Porte de Versailles.

Broader goals

Beyond just building biological systems, broader goals of iGEM include:

To enable the systematic engineering of biology.
To promote the open and transparent development of tools for engineering biology.
And to help construct a society that can productively and safely apply biological technology.

iGEM's dual aspects of self-organization and imaginative manipulation of genetic material have demonstrated a new way to arouse student interest in modern biology and to develop their independent learning skills.

Competition Results

High School Division

Top High School Teams by Year
	Grand Prize	2nd	3rd	Complete Results
2024	GEMS-Taiwan	GreatBay-Scie		iGEM 2024
2023	Japan-United	BASIS-China		iGEM 2023
2022	Lambert_GA	PuiChing_Macau		iGEM 2022
2021	LINKS_China	SZ_SHD		iGEM 2021
2020	TAS Taipei	GreatBay SCIE		iGEM 2020
2019	GreatBay SZ			iGEM 2019
2018	GreatBay China			iGEM 2018
2017	TAS Taipei			iGEM 2017
2016	HSiTAIWAN			iGEM 2016
2015	TAS Taipei			iGEM HS 2015
2014	CSIA-SouthKorea	TP CC-SanDiego	TAS Taipei	iGEM HS 2014
2013	Lethbridge Canada	AUC Turkey	CIDEB-UANL Mexico	iGEM HS 2013
2012	Heidelberg LSL	NC School of Sci Math	CIDEB-UANL Mexico	iGEM HS 2012
2011	Years prior to 2012 had no separate high school division.

High School Ranking by Country

Country	Grand Prize	Runners-Up	Top 2 Total
Chinese Taipei	5	0	5
China	3	4	7
United States	1	2	3
Canada	1	0	1
Germany	1	0	1
Japan	1	0	1
South Korea	1	0	1
Macao	0	1	1
Turkey	0	1	1

Undergraduate Division

Top Undergraduate Teams by Year
	Grand Prize	2nd	3rd				Complete Results
2024	Heidelberg	JU-Krakow	Sydney-Australia				iGEM 2024
2023	McGill	Vilnius-Lithuania	NUS-Singapore				iGEM 2023
2022	TU-Eindhoven	INSA_Lyon1	HKUST				iGEM 2022
2021	Toulouse INSA-UPS	NUS-Singapore	Shanghai Tech China				iGEM 2021
2020	Vilnius-Lithuania	Toulouse INSA-UPS	XMU China				iGEM 2020
2019	NCKU Tainan	Calgary	TU Kaiserslautern				iGEM 2019
2018	Valencia	UC San Diego	SZU-China				iGEM 2018
2017	Vilnius-Lithuania	William and Mary	Heidelberg				iGEM 2017
2016	Imperial	Sydney Australia	SCAU-China				iGEM 2016
2015	William and Mary	Czech Republic	Heidelberg				iGEM 2015
2014	Heidelberg	Imperial	NCTU Formosa				iGEM 2014
2013	Heidelberg	TU Munich	Imperial				iGEM 2013
2012	Groningen	Ljubljana	Paris Bettencourt	LMU Munich			iGEM 2012
2011	Washington	Imperial	ZJU China	MIT			iGEM 2011
2010	Ljubljana	Peking	BCCS Bristol	Cambridge	Imperial	TU Delft	iGEM 2010 Archived 2013-01-12 at archive.today
2009	Cambridge	Heidelberg	Valencia	Freiburg	Groningen	Imperial	iGEM 2009 Archived 2013-01-13 at archive.today
2008	Ljubljana	Freiburg	Caltech	Harvard	NYMU Taipei	UC Berkeley	iGEM 2008
2007	Peking	Paris	Ljubljana	UC Berkeley	UCSF	USTC	iGEM 2007
2006	Ljubljana	Imperial	Princeton				iGEM 2006
2005	Years prior to 2006 had no specific winners.						iGEM 2005
2004							IAP 2004, SBC 2004
2003							IAP 2003

Undergraduate Ranking by Country

Country	Grand Prize	Runners-Up	2nd Runners-Up	Top 3 Total
Germany	3	3	3	9
Slovenia	3	1	1	5
United Kingdom	2	3	2	7
United States	2	2	2	6
Lithuania	2	1	0	3
Netherlands	2	0	0	2
France	1	3	1	5
China	1	1	5	7
Canada	1	1	0	2
Chinese Taipei	1	0	1	2
Spain	1	0	1	2
Australia	0	1	1	2
Singapore	0	1	1	2
Czech Republic	0	1	0	1
Poland	0	1	0	1
Hong Kong	0	0	1	1

Overgraduate Division

Top Overgraduate Teams by Year
	Grand Prize	2nd	3rd	Top 10	Complete Results
2024	Marburg	Aachen		Aachen EPFL Evry-Paris-Saclay Freiburg Ionis-Paris Marburg Toulouse-INSA-UPS TUM Straubing UToronto WageningenUR	iGEM 2024
2023	Estonia-TUIT	Leiden			iGEM 2023
2022	UCopenhagen	Montpellier			iGEM 2022
2021	Marburg	TU Delft			iGEM 2021
2020	Leiden	Aachen			iGEM 2020
2019	EPFL	Wageningen UR			iGEM 2019
2018	Marburg	Munich			iGEM 2018
2017	TU Delft	Munich			iGEM 2017
2016	Munich	Wageningen UR			iGEM 2016
2015	TU Delft	BGU Israel			iGEM 2015
2014	UC Davis	Wageningen	TU Darmstadt		iGEM 2014
2013	Paris Bettencourt	Bielefeld	Sun Yat-sen		iGEM 2013
2012	Years prior to 2013 had no separate overgraduate division.

Overgraduate Ranking by Country

Country	Grand Prize	Runners-Up	Top 2 Total
Germany	4	5	9
Netherlands	3	5	8
France	1	1	2
Denmark	1	0	1
Estonia	1	0	1
Switzerland	1	0	1
United States	1	0	1
Israel	0	1	1

Notes

Team from seven different high schools.
Combined team from Torrey Pines High School and Canyon Crest Academy.
In 2013 iGEM was divided into an undergraduate and an overgraduate section. The criterion for division was the participation of team members older than 23 years.
Students were from different universities of Paris (Paris Descartes University, Paris Diderot University, Pierre and Marie Curie University).
As of June 2012, the 2011 results page does not include results from the Championship Jamboree; but details can be found at the Jamboree page.
2007 had six finalists but none were selected as specific runners-up.
Combined team from Technische Universität München and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.
Combined team from Technische Universität München and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.
In 2013 iGEM was divided into an undergraduate and an overgraduate section. The criterium for division was the participance of team members older than 23 years.

References

"iGEM Competitions". igem.org. Retrieved 2023-04-25.
"Learn about iGEM". Retrieved 2013-05-06.
Trafton, Anne. "Rewiring Cells". Technology Review.
"iGEM 2005". Retrieved 2013-05-06.
"Previous iGEM Competitions". iGEM. Retrieved 2011-11-12.
Rettberg, R.; Dally, W.J.; Culler, D.E. (1998). "The Bleeding Edge". IEEE Micro. 18. IEEE: 10–11. doi:10.1109/MM.1998.653009.
"Team List 2011". iGEM. Retrieved 18 October 2014.
"Jamborees". iGEM. Retrieved 18 October 2014.
"Tracks 2014". iGEM. Retrieved 24 October 2014.
"Giant Jamboree". iGEM. Retrieved 24 October 2014.
Guan, Zheng-jun; Schmidt, Markus; Pei, Lei; Wei, Wei; Ma, Ke-Ping (2013). "Biosafety Considerations of Synthetic Biology in the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Competition". BioScience. 63: 25–34. doi:10.1525/bio.2013.63.1.7.

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