The award ceremony is over. First the bronze medals were announced, but no KULeuven there. Drew Endy went on with the silver medals, but still nothing for us. Our hearts started to tick even faster as the gold medal winners were to be announced… It was everything or nothing! At last the verdict came, and there we were! Among the 16 gold medal winners, the KULeuven appeared on the big screen! Yes, we did!

Waiting for the judges and turning Kresge auditorium upside down…

Meagan announced the 6 finalists in alphabetical order in front of a cheering crowd. Berkeley Wetware, Caltech, Freiburg, Harvard, K…? But then followed NYMU Taipei and Slovenia…. As eager competitors we were of course disappointed, but: our congratulations to the finalists! And didn’t we learn never to believe spreading rumours? Well, new chances today as in the morning the 6 finalists will give their presentation again and by noon, also all other prizes will be announced. Fingers crossed!

Dr. Coli’s poster turned out to be a blockbuster at the iGEM 2008 Jamboree. Judges, iGEM colleagues and Randy Rettberg (!) were smoothly walked through. Also the KULeuven team made a tour of the posters to ask some tricky questions.

After presentations, we met Janine Kiers from TUDelft and gave some K.U.Leuven folders to the Groningen team. Janine congratulated us with our nice performance and we discussed how our teams experienced iGEM this year. In short: iGEM rulez!

In 30 minutes, finalists will be announced…