International Genetically Engineered Machine Competitions
February 2005 — December 2006
"iGem has been an awesome experience. Working over the summer to create a novel project was really cool.
....I really liked the open attitude of the relatively small (but growing) Synthetic Biology [sic] and hope it continues. Innovation and creativity
have been applauded, which is amazing."
—iGem 2005 Undergraduate Participant
The idea of engineering and building simple biological systems from standard, interchangeable parts that can
operate within living cells is a compelling challenge. A serious obstacle in this new discipline of Synthetic Biology is the need for the
development of standardized biological parts that are well specified and able to be paired with other parts of systems. Design competitions,
such as robotics competitions, are a proven way of using student challenges to stimulate design, so this project was designed to bring that
concept to this emerging field of biology.
After a period of productive independent activity, student teams competed against five other schools to build
cellular state machines and counters, culminating in a jamboree that yielded such innovative designs as a photographic biofilm capable of
capturing an image. A series of successive competitions, including ones bringing students together internationally, has helped stimulate a
healthy, competitive environment that should accelerate biological systems engineering—and make its exploration more rewarding for students.
Interest in the iGem competitions has grown enormously over the past two years. Where the first iGem competition in late 2004 attracted just
five schools, the third competition in November 2006 attracted 450 students and teachers from 37 schools.
Investigators:
Dr. Thomas Knight, Computer Science and Artificial
Intelligence Laboratory
Randy Rettberg, Biological Engineering
Additional Information:
http://www.igem2006.com
http://icampus.mit.edu/projects/iGem.shtml
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Spoken Lecture Processing: Transcription, Tagging, and Retrieval
September 2003 — December 2006
In the digital era, it is easier than ever to record and disseminate vast amounts of audio-visual course
content. For the most part, that material is not easily searchable or reusable because—unlike text—it cannot be easily searched or
indexed to find, for example, a desired 10-second excerpt in an hour-long video.
This project used automatic speech recognition technologies to create systems that automatically transcribe,
annotate, and even summarize recorded audio and video material by means of robust speaker-independent speech processing. The project
researchers have created a publicly accessible demonstration lecture browser where video lectures from MIT OpenCourseWare and MIT World
can be explored, using a search engine that indexes the automatic transcription. One goal of this work is to provide search and indexing
capabilities for all OpenCourseWare video material.
Another output of this research is a Web-based spoken lecture processing server that allows users to
upload audio files for automatic transcription and indexing. To help train the speech recognizer, users can provide their own
supplemental text files, such as journal articles and book chapters, which can be used to adapt the language model and vocabulary
of the system.
Investigators:
Dr. James Glass, Computer Science and Artificial
Intelligence Laboratory
Prof. Regina Barzilay, Dept. of Electrical Engineering
and Computer Science
Dr. T.J. Hazen, Computer Science and Artificial
Intelligence Laboratory
Scott Cyphers, Computer Science and Artificial
Intelligence Laboratory
Additional Information:
http://icampus.mit.edu/projects/SpokenLecture.shtml
http://web.sls.csail.mit.edu/lectures
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