Student Activities
BME Teams Achieve Gold Medal Success at International SynBio Challenges
Two student teams have achieved outstanding results at SynBio Challenges 2026, an international synthetic biology competition for undergraduate students. Competing against over 100 teams from around the world, both teams earned Gold Medals by ranking in the top 40% for their innovative solutions in genetic engineering.
This year’s challenge tasked participants with designing custom promoter sequences to control the expression of three fluorescent proteins—red, green, and blue. By tuning these biological signals, the teams aimed to generate two target color profiles symbolically representing "love" and "peace."
The two teams tackled the complex challenge using distinctly different, creative design methodologies:
| Team 1 Captains: IMMANUEL Kennard Gilbert, BUDHI Kevin Henlyson Members: TJAHJADI Cleighton Darian, LIM Dimitri, PRANATA Felice, SANTOSO Jolin Isabel, Saha Authai Shemonti, Lo Hiu Yau, Leung Siu Wai, AAMINA Zainab Bibi, THETHI Jasmeh Kaur, AHAMMAD Surid, Frassek Bjorn, ZHANG Yuzhen |
Adopted a traditional design workflow, randomizing the promoter sequences and input them into commercial software to check the protein expression efficiency |
| Team 2 Captain: LEUNG Siu Wai Members: Lo Hiu Yau, ZHANG Yuzhen |
Adopted AI model and machine learning to speed up the process and applied thermodynamic equations to help them choose the best sequence |
Particularly, Team 2 was selected to give a short presentation on their project during the SynBio Challenges Carnival in Shenzhen. They gave an excellent talk and communicated with many other students and faculties around the world, a valuable experience that inspired their enthusiasm for biological research and boosted their confidence in solving open-end questions.