A team of science-minded San Francisco youths has received recognition from elected officials for a UCSF-backed project that earned high honors at a recent biotechnology competition.
The team, comprising six students from San Francisco’s Abraham Lincoln High School and two international students, won the awards for Best New Application Area and Best Poster, Runner-Up, at the 2008 International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition at MIT.
As UCSF Today first reported in a
Dec. 10 feature story, the UCSF-Lincoln team was the only one made up predominantly of high schoolers in the November competition, which featured 84 teams from 21 countries.
Over a three-month period of intensive work in a UCSF lab last summer, the students developed tools to “silence,” or repress, targeted blocks of genes — an achievement that could have major implications for stem cell engineering and numerous synthetic biology applications, said Wendell Lim, PhD, UCSF professor of cellular and molecular pharmacology and one of two faculty advisers who supervised the project.
This was the second year UCSF teamed up with Lincoln High, a school Lim first approached because of its rigorous, two-year biotechnology course. Lincoln students must complete at least the first year of the course to be eligible for the iGEM team.
“The iGEM competition is essentially a biotechnology Olympics,” Lim said, “and I really couldn’t be more pleased by the success of this partnership and these students.”
Members of the UCSF-Lincoln High School iGEM team answer audience questions about their project. Photo by Robin Hindery
Lim and the iGEM judges weren’t the only ones impressed. After news of their strong performance reached the ears of state and city officials, the team received certificates of honor from the California Legislature, the state Senate and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
Lim and other members of his lab formally presented those certificates to the students at a Jan. 10 ceremony at the California Academy of Sciences — an event that brought together the students’ family members and friends and the UCSF faculty, graduate students and research fellows who supervised and guided their work.
“I got a lot more out of this than just an award,” said Alex Ng, a member of the 2007 UCSF-Lincoln iGEM team, who came back in 2008 with another former participant to serve as a mentor. “The experience and independence UCSF have given us are something you can’t find anywhere else.”
The team members’ enthusiasm has been contagious, said Lincoln biotechnology teacher George Cachianes.
“I now have 30 students asking to be on next year’s team,” he said. “This whole experience shows us that we can really grow our own scientific talent right here if we start early.”
Lim couldn’t agree more.
“This program has demonstrated that if we challenge these students, they will respond with great insight and innovation,” he said.
Related Links:
Lim Lab at UCSF
2008 International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition
