More than twenty people - students, professors and researchers from the university - attended a roundtable on innovation and biotechnology entitled "Synthetic biology - why should I be interested now?", organized by the School of Sciences at partnership with the Cima University of Navarra.

This session was attended by Nerea Capon and Onkar Date, iGEM coordinators in Europe and Asia, and moderated by Antonio Pineda, director of research Translational of Cima University of Navarra and Juanjo Rubio, director of the Social Innovation Unit of Navarra.

The main focus of the meeting has been to explain the project IGEM, a worldwide synthetic biology competition for students developed by the high school Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and whose purpose is to promote the research scientific by the different countries of the world. In this initiative, students develop projects related to biotechnology, ranging from crop control, water quality, food safety, laboratory automation, etc.

Nera Capon, European coordinator of IGEM, reinforced the "community" character of this voluntary initiative and insisted on the importance of each group acting for the benefit of the geographical community in which it is based. "We want to bring innovation to all parts of the world". Relevant information highlighted the participation to date of a total of 5,000 students - from high school diploma to doctorate- distributed in 350 teams around the planet, and it has also been indicated that 175 startups with a value of 20 billion dollars have been generated.

The Biotechnology Club and business of the School, in partnership with the students of the Science and Business Program, intends to participate in this project forming a mixed group with students from the Public University of Navarra, in order to represent Navarra in this international competition.

This session was held at framework of Biospain 2021, a forum organized by the association Spanish Biocompanies (ASEBIO) that brought together the best researchers and professionals in the biotechnology sector for a week.