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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Rockville MD - November 28, 2016 - In the opening ceremony of the annual iGEM (International Genetically Engineered Machine) Scientific Jamboree, PLOS (Public Library of Science) announced their partnership with Breezio and Ars Biotechnica to continue to drive innovation into the scholarly publishing process with a new live peer review model. Since launching its first journal in 2003, PLOS has been a force for transformation in scholarly publishing, breaking with archaic traditions from previous generations. PLOS innovations accelerate science and medicine, from research discovery to influence tracking. Now they hope to do it again and further advance the speed of science by exploring the use of live community-based peer review for submissions from iGEM students.

Over a year ago at iGEM 2015 I connected with the founder of BioTreks and showed him Breezio. In it, he saw the potential to make a monumental impact on how high school synthetic biology research could be taught, particularly with regard to exposing students to the publication experience and the peer review process. In order to achieve this, some of the biggest challenges we needed to address involved how the schedules of typical high school students, and their teachers/mentors, presented time constraints that were vastly different than college students. Another challenge was that he understood there would be great benefit to bringing high school synbio students together outside of iGEM to help with each other’s research, but he didn’t have an easy ‘place’ for everyone to meet.

Society Day at the 2016 STM’s Annual Conference was dedicated to exploring the trends that are reshaping societies strategies over the coming few years within publishing, membership, technology, innovation, and growth. I was honored to be a member of the Panel on Emerging Collaborative Technology and Tools Moving Research Forward which was moderated by: Daniya Tamendarova, Director, Strategic Business Development, APA Journals. My co-panelists included: Susan Cato, Director, Digital Strategy & Member Services, American Society of Plant Biologist, Deric Corlew, Vice President of Business Development, Research Square, and Josh Freeman, Founding General Manager, Trellis and Senior Adviser, Multi-Media Strategies, AAAS.