This year’s team is the 14th Virginia iGEM team to compete in the INTERNATIONAL GENETICALLY ENGINEERED MACHINE competition, the Giant Jamboree, following a legacy of successful teams and their inventive synthetic biology solutions.

At the 2023 iGEM Grand Jamboree in Paris, France, Virginia iGEM was awarded a Gold Medal for their project in cellulitis treatment: Niskin. Competing with over 250 undergraduate and graduate teams from around the world, the 2023 Virginia iGEM team created a unique device to synthetically produce topical agents for dermal application and received the highest medal which can be awarded to competitors. The team has successfully patented the design and research to continue development is ongoing.

In this year’s iGEM's Virtual Giant Jamboree in November 2021, Virginia iGEM was awarded a Silver Medal for their innovative project in metabolic engineering: Manifold. Competing against almost 250 teams from around the world, the Virginia iGEM team completed a comprehensive design, laboratory plan, outreach components, and extensive math modeling work. This was the 15th consecutive year UVA has participated in the worldwide competition.

This year was the first time in two years that the competition was in-person, and the first time the competition was held out of the country. Virginia iGEM 2022 had the opportunity to travel to Paris, France to present their project AtheroSHuffle: A Novel Point-of-Care Detection for Early Atherosclerosis. This was the 16th consecutive year Virginia has participated in iGEM, and this year, Team Virginia competed against 346 teams from around the world. The team was nominated for Best Diagnostic Project and awarded a gold medal for their efforts. Read the Biology Department's article here!