Innovation Anthology #182:

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This weekend, university students from around the world will converge on Boston, their eyes on winning first place at the iGEM Jamboree at MIT.

iGEM stands for International Genetically Engineered Machines.

And seven teams from Alberta will try their best to repeat the success of last year’s winners, the Butanerds from the University of Alberta. The Butanerds developed a micro-organism that produces a biofuel called butanol. And now they have a million dollar grant to commercialize it.

U of A biochemistry professor Dr. Michael Ellison is an advisor to Alberta’s iGEM teams.

DR. MICHAEL ELLISON: The National Institute for Nanotechnology project is a very interesting project. They are trying to develop logic gates in a simple microorganism. These gates you normally find in computers. And, or, not, these kind of decision making processes so they can make a system set up in ecoli so they can program e.coli to go about and recognize certain signals and perform certain kinds of task, depending on the range of signals they detect.

The iGEM Jamboree runs in Boston November 8th and 9th.

Thanks today Alberta Ingenuity.

I’M CHERYL CROUCHER

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Alberta Ingenuity

Established in 2000, the Alberta Ingenuity Fund supports science and engineering research of the highest calibre, to create a prosperous future for the province of Alberta. It draws funding from a $1 billion endowment established in 2000 and managed by the Government of Alberta to build the capacity for innovation, especially in areas with long lasting social and economic impact.

Among its many programs, Alberta Ingenuity supports graduate students and university researchers, industrial research and commercialization partnerships, and has established several Centres and Institutes.

In January 2010, under the new Alberta Innovation Framework, Alberta Ingenuity was restructured and absorbed in the new agency Alberta Innovates Technology Solutions.

Program Date: 2008-11-06