TwInn4MicroUp at iGEM Fest ’26: Synthetic Biology, Biotechnology and Circular Economy
On 3 and 4 October 2026, the iGEM Athens 2026 student team hosted iGEM Fest ’26 at the Medical School of the University of Athens. The free two-day event was dedicated to synthetic biology, biotechnology and the circular economy, and brought together students, professors and iGEM research teams for talks, interactive workshops and networking. Around 100 participants attended.
The TwInn4MicroUp consortium was represented by the Biotechnology Laboratory of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA). On the first day, Project Coordinator Prof. Evangelos Topakas presented “Beyond Recycling: Creating Plastic Biorefineries with Enzymes and Microbial Cell Factories“. He was followed by Konstantinos Grigorakis, PhD candidate at NTUA, who presented “Pythia: A Deep Learning Framework for Predicting the Specificity of Carbohydrate-Binding Modules Based on Their Molecular Surface“.
The programme covered synthetic biology, plastic recycling, bacterial cellulose, metabolic engineering and bioprocesses on Saturday, followed on Sunday by protein structures, bioinformatics and AI in synthetic biology. Participants also took part in hands-on workshops on karyotyping and PyMOL protein structure analysis, a bioethics display debate, and a closing round table with the iGEM teams of Athens, Thessaly, Thessaloniki, Ioannina and UniCrete on biosafety and biosecurity.
TwInn4MicroUp congratulates the iGEM Athens team on organizing the event and on creating a space where early-career researchers could explore how synthetic biology can address real-world challenges such as plastic pollution.
