As Luke reported on Monday, the project has hit a bump in the road - namely, our applications for summer stipends from the Wellcome Trust were declined.
However, the project is still going to go full steam ahead! We have manged to find other stipends for some of our members, and the rest of us are going to find other ways to fund our living, even if it means cutting back on a few luxuries (beer, hair conditioner, light...)  in order to continue with the project. We are still looking into other funding sources however, so any donations or advice is very welcome. We currently have 7 members on our iGEM team roster (although a couple of them are stipend dependent), and are considering taking on a few more students, so don't hesitate to contact if you are interested in finding out more about how to become a member (email igem@le.ac.uk).

Anthony Cox - Vice Project Leader


More good news!
Our application for the University of Leicester iGEM team has been accepted by the iGEM Headquarters meaning that our metaphorical boat is in the water! See http://igem.org/Team.cgi for our entrance page. Our registration fee has been paid, and we thank all of our current sponsors for helping with that, including a very generous donation from Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys and further donations from the University of Leicester Genetics Department. I know it's early to thank people, but none of this would be possible without our main supervisor Dr Richard Badge for all of his help, organisation and guidance with the registration and project in general.

Christopher Morton - Project Leader

From left to right, William Harrison, Nathan Hanna, Anthony Cox, Christopher Morton, Luke Thompson, Grace Hodson, Neil Nathwani, Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys and Philip Higgs.

Some unfortunate news to report...

Hello to everyone reading our blog. We received some unfortunate news today, being that we were unsuccessful in our stipend application to cover our living expenses from the Wellcome Trust, which could potentially derail the project.
We want to carry on with this project though, due to the potential massive environmental advantages that could be gained. It's just that now we need an alternative source of funding to cover living expenses to allow us to take part in the iGEM competition, which we are currently looking into. If anyone knows of an alternative place we could apply for stipends and/or funding for this project, it would be great if you could let us know by commenting on the blog or emailing us at igem@leicester.ac.uk

Many thanks,
Luke Thompson - Lab leader

UoLeicester iGEM in partnership with GENIE

As you have probably seen on the side and at the bottom of our blog, we are now working in partnership with the University of Leicester's Genetics Education Networking for Innovation & Excellence (GENIE http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/genetics/genie/about), the UK's only Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning in Genetics. This development was announced on their news page at http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/genetics/genie/news ,  giving a great opportunity for our project to gain valuable support and exposure through GENIEs outreach program; but also for GENIE to use the awesome ideas of iGEM to promote interest in genetics research amongst school children, students and the general public.

More updates on the sponsored walk to follow shortly, as well as news of our next event which is likely to be a Citizen Science Experiment, with details and how to get involved to be available soon  - Watch This Space - 

Christopher Morton - Project leader  

After the walk,

This is only a quick update, however we will be updating on the walk soon.

The sponsored walk was a success! After a total of around £650 pledged (still climbing as totals come in) we aimed to set off at around 9am from the Adrian building on the University of Leicester Campus and walk towards the river soar and on wards to Loughborough. There we're a few hiccups along the way which we will tell all about when the photos go up, but other than that it was a great day! Weather held out, and a good 99% of all challenges we're completed. Also a massive thank you from all of the team to everyone for every single penny sponsored

Christopher Morton - project leader 

Sponsored walk update - two days to go!

Just a quick update on our sponsored walk - we currently have about £300 pledged for the walk (which will get us as far as Barrow, and isn't far from our next target of £400 to get us to Loughborough). To claim all of this, we have to not only walk twelve miles, but our great leader Chris has to carry one of us some distance, we will be doing a "Ministry of Silly Walks" race, and I myself must spend about a mile of it in morphsuit and Stetson. I believe Will is also doing the walk in a lycra all-in-one from his rowing club, although I am not sure whether this is because of a donation or due to personal preference.

Also, we shall all be donning our beautiful new t-shirts for the event! After much debate, we finally agreed on a logo and a design that we all liked, and the t-shirts arrived today. Here's a picture of Luke wearing his...

More to come.

Anthony Cox, Vice Project Leader.