About

Founded in 2015 by the 2015 Cambridge-JIC iGEM team, the Synthetic Biology Society (SynBioSoc) brings together the student community of Cambridge to promote the burgeoning discipline of synthetic biology, which applies the principles of engineering to tackle key problems in biology, medicine, industry, and other applied fields.

Our Society is unique in Cambridge for offering members a chance to gain hands-on experience in synthetic biology through student-designed and student-led projects spanning the diverse fields that comprise synthetic biology (i.e. biology, computing, and engineering/hardware). We have access to a community laboratory space where members can conduct experiments as part of student teams working together towards long-term research projects, along with space in the engineering department for building instruments and devices that can advance our laboratory science. We also let students participate in software and computational modeling projects that align with the data and devices generated by the Society, giving our members an exceptional opportunity to work within a highly interdisciplinary yet interconnected community.

In addition to our projects, we organize teaching workshops to introduce students to the laboratory and computational sides of synthetic biology. These workshops fill in gaps in the standard student curricula and have allowed several classes of members to graduate from not knowing what synthetic biology is all the way up to completing rigorous science either through our projects or as part of Cambridge’s academic research labs.

Lastly to compliment our more hands-on activities, we also invite periodic speakers, connect members to other synthetic biology events happening in the area, and put together events such as data-exploration hackathons for our members.