Aalto-Helsinki Podcast

Zsófia invites Sally Chesnut, leader of the 2021 Team, to join her and recount how last year's project was born, the most rewarding and most challenging parts of the iGEM experience, and any words of wisdom for the competition (and life in general!). 

In this episode, drylab team member Hanna and wetlab team member Zsófia dive into this year’s research project, sharing the ideation process, key scientific concepts and goals of our 2022 focus: biofilm and chronic wounds.

Hosted by Lilith

Season 2 of the Aalto-Helsinki Podcast is here! Get to know our new team leaders and hear about our first few months on our iGEM journey.

Hosted by Zsófia and Mari

Have you ever struggled with knowing what you want to do with your studies? Not all career paths are the same, and work opportunities can sometimes be found through surprising pathways. In our final episode of the summer, our guest from ThermoFisher, Petri Kouvonen, shares his career path and how proteomics offers a huge potential to discovering new things in science and advancing therapeutics.

Hosted by Emma and Vilma. 

Sleep is something that we all do but have you ever considered its importance? Sleep is now considered one of the main pillars of good health and people are becoming more aware of it. In this week's episode Henna-Kaisa Wigren, a sleep researcher, tells you more about sleep, its regulation, and its importance to our health. Listen to this week's episode if you don't want to feel guilty about sleeping in again! 

Hosted by Sof and Vilma. 

Most of us have some kind of understanding about science, but might not really stop to consider what science actually is. Why do some scientists say contradicting things? Why is their opinion always changing? We tackle these kinds of questions and talk about science communication and education with Harri Montonen from Science Center Heureka.

Hosted by Iiris and Anniina

We are using bioinformatic tools on a day-to-day basis to gain insights on the most complex parts of our project. Join us and learn what bioinformatics is and what cool things it can be used for. In this week’s episode we have a very special guest, Bulat Zagidullin, our mentor, who has years of experience in the field of bioinformatics. He is, among our five PhD student mentors, guiding us through the journey of iGEM.

Hosted by Anni and Iiris.

Design thinking is key for transforming great research into real products. Our guest Manuel Arias Barrantes, an interdisciplinary researcher from VTT and project manager at SynBio Powerhouse, explains what is the importance of a design approach in scientific research and how we can learn to communicate between multiple different fields to help new innovations thrive.

Team Thessaly has been our partner and dear friend during the iGEM journey. We are working on very similar projects and share similar passions and motivations. In this episode, we talk about these similarities and differences in our projects, mental health, its stigma and improving the awareness of its importance. Listen to hear our casual conversation about these topics dear to our hearts.

Hosted by Anni and Sof.

iGEM is more than just a science project. We work to increase scientific awareness by sharing resources and collaborating with local scientific companies. This week, we chat with Joel Noutere, the CEO of Sciar, a company based in Helsinki.

Sciar Ltd is a laboratory equipment supplier that works to optimize documentation practices. Their innovation couples a cloud based software and augmented reality to better improve laboratory workflow and quality assurance.

Hosted by Joanna and Quique.

Have you ever wondered what causes brain diseases, like Alzheimer’s? In this week’s episode we discuss neurodegenerative diseases with Juha Saarikangas, an assistant professor at Helsinki Institute of Life Sciences, HiLIFE. Listen to the episode to learn how protein misfolding occurs and causes neurodegenerative diseases, their treatment options, and what you can do to mitigate your risks of developing damaging brain diseases.

Hosted by Vilma and Sof. 

Mental health is a growing global health concern accelerated by our modern lifestyle and the COVID-19 pandemic. New innovations and further research are necessary to understand the complexity of our minds. With Valtteri Korkiakoski from Medified, we want to discuss innovative mental healthcare solutions and the digitalization of healthcare.

Medified is a Finnish startup which offers a dynamic mental health treatment monitoring software and CE-marked medical device Medified. Their aim is to create a connection between healthcare professionals and mental health patients for interactive and personalized treatment solutions.

Hosted by Emma and Iiris.

The gut microbiome is a rich community of microbes affecting our mental and physical wellbeing through various known and unknown pathways. In this episode, our team members describe the design process of our research tool, why it matters to research the gut, and how will GutLux shed light on our gut interactions.

Hosted by Emma and Sof. 

What is it like to take part in the world’s largest synthetic biology competition? Science, team spirit, learning new skills, having fun and sometimes surprising challenges belong to the nature of iGEM. Two Aalto-Helsinki team alumni, Carla and Neja, are here to share their experiences of their competition years.

Hosted by Anni and Anniina.

Aalto-Helsinki team has represented Finland in the iGEM competition since 2014. Our guest speaker Oskari Vinko, a scientist by training but an entrepreneur by heart, talks about building teams and ideas from scratch. He started Aalto-Helsinki, the first Finnish iGEM team back in 2014.

Hosted by Emma and Vilma. 

Who are we? What is iGEM? What does SynBio stand for? Listen to this week’s episode to learn more about what we do, what are the obstacles of student-led research, and how synthetic biology can transform the world.

Hosted by Iiris and Sof.