Biomod Blog

Here are the summarized results of the student surveys. Thanks to everyone who responded with feedback to help us improve BIOMOD.

Question 1: What aspects of BIOMOD did you enjoy and think we should keep the same in future years?

• well-organized (6)
• awesome hotel (5)
• judging criteria in general / nice balance between wiki/video/talk (5)
• youtube video requirement (3)
• presentation length (3)
• projected wall timer (2)
• good food (2)
• prize money (2)
• single-day event (1)
• after party (1)
• Autodesk seminar (1)
• frequent facebook updates (1)
• light emphasis on ‘execution’ (1)
• limited focus to biomolecular design (1)
• open-ended project (1)
• useful quickguide (1)

Question 2: What are your recommendations for improving BIOMOD?

Social:

• more time for socializing/networking (5)
• official party / sponsored event (2)
• assigned seating at lunch to intersperse teams (1)

Deadlines:

• earlier wiki freeze (3)
• longer presentations (2)
• summer date (2)
• different date from igem (1)

Scoring:

• assign less weight to presentation (3)
• presentations should be scored differently (1)
• completely revise scoring system (1)
• teams should get more direct feedback from judges (1)

Score reporting:

• publish all judging scores (1)
• publish scores for top 5–10 teams (1)
• publish scores directly to teams so they can improve (1)

Rules:

• more detailed guidelines for wiki/video/presentation content (2)
• more deadlines/checkpoints through the summer (1)
• require project topic approval (1)
• have students send identification to verify they are undergraduates (1)
• limit team size (1)

Jamboree format:

• add poster session (2)
• add more tutorials / workshops / lectures by professors (1)
• top finalists should give encore presentations (1)
• longer jamboree (1)
• transportation between hotel and event (1)

Awards:

• add prize category for scientific impact/relevance (1)
• add prize category for computational work (1)
• encourage non-DNA-origami projects via prize categories (1)
• more award categories (1)
• popular vote prize (1)

Visit the How to Join page to sign up!

Thanks to everyone for making the first BIOMOD competition an awesome success, and congratulations to the Danish Nano Artists for winning the Grand Prize!

Click here for the full list of winners.

We’ve embedded all the videos here for easy viewing.

Once you have uploaded your YouTube video, please embed (instructions) it on the front page of your team wiki (or link to it prominently if necessary).

Judges will be provided with your team wiki url, and they will expect to find the YouTube video in the same place.