iGEM is an international competition in synthetic biology. Student teams will use innovative approaches that could solve local and global challenges. In supervised meetings and workshops, the students will design and plan a project suitable for the iGEM competition.
At the University of Oslo, students can enroll in a master’s course at the Department of Biosciences, where they can form their own iGEM student team and register for the annual competition. Principal Investigators are Dirk Linke, Athanasios Saragliadis and Kirsten Borse Haraldsen.
Efficient training with smarter monitoring
This years' iGEM-team participated with the project "LactIQ: Real-Time Insight for Smarter Training". The project aims to make lactate monitoring simple, continuous, and painless during training. Instead of finger pricks and costly disposable strips, the solution uses a microneedle patch on the skin that draws fluid from just beneath the surface. There, the enzyme lactate oxidase converts lactate into signals that can be read electrically, allowing athletes to follow their lactate levels in real time without interrupting the session.
The technology is inspired by continuous glucose monitors and is especially relevant for threshold-based training. When athletes can see the full lactate curve throughout a workout, it becomes easier to maintain the right intensity, fine-tune rest periods, and understand how the body responds from interval to interval. This can improve workout quality, speed up recovery, and reduce waste and costs compared to traditional methods.
The project was developed in close dialogue with coaches, athletes, and sports physiologists, and has received support from Olympiatoppen and the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences. LaqtIQ combines sports science, biotechnology, and materials science in a way that impressed the judges at the international final, and the team from the University of Oslo was awarded a gold medal.
This year’s student team
- Alan Samrend
- Amanda Marie Grefstad Frøynes
- Diego Ricardo Salazar Ccatamayo
- Eline Margrethe Scheie-Ahlgren
- Forough Asadian
- Khayal Dharmendra Devaka
- Jon Einar Rydsaa
- Peder Anders Hvidsten Hem
- Phelix Li Wu
4th Grand Jamboree in Paris
The iGEM (International Genetically Engineered Machine) competition is an annual, worldwide event where student-teams from all over the world meet to solve global challenges using synthetic biology. Synthetic biology is an emerging field that combines principles from biology, engineering, and other disciplines to design and build new biological systems. It holds the potential to revolutionize industries, from healthcare and agriculture to environmental sustainability.
iGEM is the world’s biggest synthetic biology competition, with more than 420 teams registered for the Grand Jamboree this year. iGEM’s 4th Grand Jamboree in Paris welcomed its largest and most diverse onsite audience to date, with 5,000 attendees from over 50 countries and regions, and more than 500 sessions, running 28—31 October 2025.