Biomod Blog

Dear BIOMOD Community,

We are pleased to announce that BIOMOD will officially resume this year as a “hybrid” event, with options for in-person and online participation.

This year’s competition is being organized by the Molecular Robotics Research Group of Japan (MOLBOT), with support from the BIOMOD Foundation. MOLBOT has organized many successful regional BIOMOD.jp events, including online-only events during the past few years.

The jamboree will take place November 4th and 5th at Tokyo Tech in Tokyo, Japan.

We will share more details soon. Please contact us if you have any questions.

Sincerely,
Shawn Douglas Ph.D.
Chairman, BIOMOD Foundation

Congratulations to UBC BIOMOD for taking home the Grand Prize in this year’s BIOMOD Japan Open!

See this page for all winners.

Our friends in the Molecular Robotics Group in Japan have been organizing a regional, online-only BIOMOD competition in recent years, the BIOMOD Japan Open. The competition takes place in English.

In past years, BIOMOD Japan participants worked remotely and designed purely computational experiments. This year, BIOMOD Japan Open will resume performing in-person wet-lab experiments.

Note that BIOMOD Japan Open teams are recommended to build their project around a shared theme. This year, the project theme is: molecular robots that can contribute to the low-carbon economy.

Free registration is now open, and the planned Jamboree date is Saturday, September 17th, 2022.

Please visit the website and contact the organizers if you have any questions.

Dear BIOMOD Community,

We have been closely monitoring international, national, and local policies that are relevant to hosting in-person events like BIOMOD. Unfortunately, we have determined that it is not yet possible for our small team to organize a large in-person event at UCSF. In particular, the potential emergence of new Sars-CoV-2 variants remains a signficant risk for canceling our event.

For those of you who are eager to participate in a student design competition, you may consider iGEM, which is planning to host in-person Jamboree October 20–23 in Paris, France.

In the meantime, we are evaluating possible alternative structures and activities for BIOMOD that will enable us to resume our mission of promoting science and science education around the world.

Sincerely,
Shawn Douglas Ph.D.
Chairman, BIOMOD Foundation

Dear BIOMOD Community,

As you know, the BIOMOD 2021 competition was canceled due to COVID-19.

Some of you have begun to inquire about registering for BIOMOD 2022. Although we are looking forward to resuming the competition as soon as it is safe and logistically feasible, unfortunately we are not yet able to do so at this time.

We typically need to make reservations for event space and lodging a full year in advance of hosting the Jamboree. Due to continued uncertainty caused by the pandemic, it is not currently possible to make those necessary commitments.

Based on the current vaccination efforts that are underway in San Francisco and worldwide, it seems that the earliest that we might be able host the next competition is March 2023. If that is the case, then we will announce open registration in March 2022.

I hope to have a more positive update around this time next year. In the meantime, take care everyone.

Sincerely,
Shawn Douglas Ph.D.
Chairman, BIOMOD Foundation