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For 2014, I wanted to highlight a sample of the amazing projects all around the planet. These are all must-see for anyone interested in biohacking, though several do not call their work "biohacking". Amazing engineering endeavors and creative projects that push new boundaries!1. Real Vegan CheeseReal Vegan Cheese gives a whole new meaning to the word "experiment". I love that this breaks the boundaries of normal "synthetic biology". It's a group of amateur and professional biologists working together across 2 communitylabs, crowdfunding research money, budgeting funds, and winning at iGEM. Lots of firsts there. All around engineering yeast to make cow's milk, with the goal of creating cheesy vegan cheese with no animals involved.Too many synthetic biology projects sound like boring algebra problems: "If we lower the price of X using BIOTECH to X/100, we will revolutionize Y and make $Z billion". Real Vegan Cheese breaks the mold and pushes science in some breathtaking new directions! (BioCurious and Counter Culture Labs, Bay Area California. Winner, iGEM 2014 - Best Community Lab Project)2. Grow Your InkGrow your own custom ink colors in a biotech lab. Everyone's is different. I think it would be awesome to write with ink created by celebrities...like "Barak Obama's Ink" or "Taylor Swift's Ink". Get into a biohacker lab and make your own! (La Paillasse, Paris)Beautiful photo gallery on Flickr3. DNA Barcoding Plants in AlaskaEllen Jorgensen and friends from Genspace cram into this tiny plane to go out to the middle-of-somewhere Alaska -- to get DNA samples of native plants. Back in the lab in sunny Brooklyn, local high school students learn to analyze the DNA samples to discover and identify what species the plants are. It was all documented on Crowdfunding Platform for Scientific Research, check out their open lab notebook here.4. Method QuarterlyDo you use terms like "open science", "ivory tower", and "democratize biotechnology"? Then you've got to check out Method Quarterly. It's a new magazine, founded by a bunch of cool people like Christina Agapakis. This interview with a scientist named Evelyn Fox Keller from issue #1 is fascinating.We put up boundaries within science — separating people, disciplines, and careers. We also put up boundaries between science and everything else. How do we create and enforce these boundaries? What separates science from art? From pseudoscience? From technology? How do we cross boundaries? How do we break them down?5. Car Pools - growing algae fuel in 43,000 pools in LA"Car Pools is a series of simulations that examine the potential ecological effects associated with the public release of genetically altered algae for biofuel production. The project draws on current open-pond algae production methods to imagine a future infrastructure of fuel producing pools for the city of Los Angeles, a metropolis built for cars, home to more than 43,000 swimming pools."I love that this group owned the word "simulation". It's not an experiment, and that's part of why it's awesome. I hope 2015 is the year of simulation. Winner, iGEM 2014 - Best Art & Design Project (Art Center College of Design, Pasadena)6. HUM - the vibrator, redesigned by physicists"The vibrator, redesigned by physicists. Sleek, minimal, intuitive. This is your gal. This is your little dude. Arduino hackable. An orgasm graph for every woman. The future of sex research. This is HUM"Awesome article about HUM in CosmoGet it on Indiegogo (ends January 16th, 2015)

What are the strongest universities at iGEM?You can take a look at the present and past jamboree results here:Jamboree Results for iGEM 2014There are several teams that won or tend to win awards (seen in green) and/or consistently win gold medals. Schools with grand prize or track winners and finalist teams all tend to do quite well.And why are they so strong at iGEM?It could be for a combination of several reasons. Every situation and school system is different, so it's difficult to define. Here are a few ideas...Funding: Naturally, a well-funded team is going to be able to achieve more than a poorly funded team. Of course, this isn't a defining factor of what makes a strong team. Money helps.Organization: There's a lot of variation in how schools (or other groups) choose to run their teams. Some are run and organized by professors or grad students, others are run more like university clubs or design teams. I haven't noticed trends in one particular structure that would work best. But, someone or a group has to be able to keep track of all the deadlines, hiring/recruitment, presentation, daily operations and other aspects of team management.Motivation: Enthusiasm from the students is probably the most essential part of a strong team/university. For example, some schools treat iGEM as a course or summer job and others treat it as more of an extra opportunity. It's important to make sure the students know how awesome iGEM is.Support: Similar to motivation, iGEM'ers that have support from the university, whether for funding, admin or mentorship, will do better. More access to resources and fewer closed doors.Diversity: Usually, stronger teams tend to have a mix of biological sciences and several other disciplines. Bringing in students in design, computing or pretty much anything else adds a really interesting spin to any project.Prior experience: Having team members or mentors that have been to iGEM before definitely helps. It's important to know the rules, criteria and a general idea of how judging works. A full understanding of the competition experience isn't necessarily communicated through online information. Some teams also include post-graduate students. Naturally, more experience leads to better work.Number of members: Bigger teams means more stuff getting done. There are so many aspects to an iGEM project that you can have sub-teams for each one (ie: human practices, modelling, and scientific projects). I remember Washington 2011 having a huge team and a list of several advisors or collaborators that helped with the project. Of course, too many people and it becomes hard to manage and expensive for jamboree tickets.(also curious if harder universities might be at a disadvantage if students have to sacrifice more for iGEM?)Maybe. This relates back to the organization section. In my opinion, the sky is the limit with iGEM projects. iGEM can provide much more/better experience than any university course. If a university's structure is such that it makes it difficult to participate in iGEM, then that structure should change to accommodate iGEM as a school credit or something. I'm not sure how many, but there are schools that do this.My experience:I'm certain there are lots of other people that could add to this answer. Briefly, this is where I'm coming from:Queen's University (Queens_Canada) team member 2011Queen's University team manager 2012Attended 2011-2014 (only missed the world finals of 2013)For the past 2 years, when not competing, I've followed several teams and supported Queen's, and University College Cork teams.In any case, I'm hoping some other iGEM'ers or alumni are out there to answer this question from their perspective.

Facts that pertain only to synthetic biology are hard to come by since it’s an interdisciplinary field. If you’d like to look into the history of it up to 2014, which does contain cool facts, here it is. Having been engaged with synthetic biology for two years now, one very cool and real fact is the amount of engagement at the undergraduate level in the international community. If you check out the iGEM site, you can see how it has grown to almost 300 teams at the 2016 conference in Boston, Massachusetts.I think the coolest thing about synthetic biology is how it’s pioneering the way for a more complete intersection of engineering and molecular biology. Previous biotechnology was the foundation for this intersection, but it could not be where it is now (i.e. synthetic biology) if it weren’t for the modularization and characterization of the components that comprise a gene: promoters, tags, terminators, etc.This is very important, and it does differ from “traditional” bioengineering which focused a lot on artificial body parts and tissue engineering. When you begin to manipulate the genetic make-up of living organisms, you open up the possibility to genetically modify organisms. If they’re microbes, you can modify them to produce disease therapeutics, high-value raw materials, bioremediate toxic waste, etc. If they’re more complex (e.g. stem cells, plant cells, etc.), then you begin to explore genome editing, agricultural enhancements, and much more.Some skeptics argue we do not understand enough about “biology” and “genetics” and it is too early to try and apply engineering to such chaotic systems. Fair. Yet at the same time, we have done so much to create robust and reliable genetic circuit parts: toggle switches, Boolean logic gates, memory storage, and BioBricks. Imagine one day being able to have “Synthetic Biology Kits” much like those chemistry or microbiology kits we may have had when we were children. This is very promising given how cheap DNA synthesis is becoming.I’m personally very excited for the field of synthetic biology because of how far reaching the applications are. That’s the coolest part about this field.