"Best Software and AI Project"
The multidisciplinary William and Mary 2022 iGEM team (Avery Bradley BIOL; Lin Fang CAMS; Megan Fleeharty NSCI; Walker Knapp CSCI & BIOL; Krithika Layagala BIOL; Zhe Liu CAMS; Diego Morandi NSCI; Bjorn Shockey PHYS & MATH, Alana Thomas BIOL; Debby Zhong BIOL) earned a Gold Medal, and was nominated for Best (Math) Model and Best Presentation! But most excitingly, the team won the BEST SOFTWARE AND AI track for a project that developed software and AI tools to predict the optimal chassis (the bacterium used for the synthetic genetic circuits) for synthetic biologists to use based on extensive metadata associated with 16S next-gen sequencing and metabolic models.
Thank you to our student advisor Beteel Abu-Ageel (BIOL) and our co-faculty advisors -- Mainak Patel - Math and Eric Bradley - App Sci. & Biol), to our WONDERFUL Biomath group who gave great feedback, and to Joe McClain who has done such a terrific job publicizing iGEM. Of course, a special thanks to the Provost's Office and the Vice Provost for Research, and to the Charles Center! Special thanks to Dennis Manos for his continual support of iGEM! We CAN do bioengineering and do it in a way that is seamlessly integrated with CS and Data Science! And in a way that addresses global problems - which iGEM requires!
While this was great for the students - integrating biology, engineering, data science, computer science, and education (we worked with the local school districts and the SoE summer programs) and provided an international experience (we collaborated with international teams all season), it was great for W&M as well! There was SO much interest in W&M. So thank you everyone!
On behalf of W&M iGEM '22, Prof.Margaret Saha
