While still enjoying our presentation prestation during the coffee break, we saw Kristen Zannella (Biotech & Pharmaceutical Industry Manager of The Mathworks) inspecting and taking pictures of our Dr. Coli poster. She was really impressed by our modeling results and excited to see us use the Simbiology toolbox of Matlab to model and simulate our model. Also our sensitivity analysis approach made an impression on her. She also gave away we are the only team beside the Mexican team to really use the toolbox the way the R&D team has developed it. Bonus for us

Yes, mission accomplished! Stefanie, Benjamien, Hanne and Jonas did a great job defending the team’s and the K.U.Leuven’s colours in front of a full MIT D463 auditorium at iGEM 2008. The jury however seemed a little bit overwhelmed by Dr. Coli’s assets. Questions on the GFP and input/output characterization were professionally answered by Nathalie, but let’s hope the lack of simulation questions does not mean iGEM did not see our modeling qualities! Maybe the camera team that recorded our presentation and left right after it is a good sign as they were only spotted before at the impressive BactoKidney project (or did you send them, Bart? . So, fingers crossed, since tonight at 8.30 the 6 iGEM 2008 finalists are announced! To be continued…

After the very delightful night and breakfast (pancakes with maple syrup!), we moved to the Stata Center at MIT. We already saw three presentations, two of which were very nice and interesting, the other one a bit uncomprehensible (the English was hard to distinguish from Chinese). Nick and Jonas tested the Bristol team with a question about their modeling. Competition will be hard, but we’ll do our very best.

At the very moment, one of the blond female biochemists is shouting out about a handsome colleague (again). We hope to see her back in time for the next round of presentations.