Requirements

The iGEM Entrepreneurship Division aims primarily to educate students in the skills that make entrepreneurs successful, immerse them in the global entrepreneurial networks and have fun in the process of developing plans for and actually creating new organizations. As such, teams should be composed mostly of students enrolled in degree-granting programs. However, successful entrepreneurs seldom succeed alone. They are able to identify, attract, and work in teams composed of individuals with diverse and complementary skillsets, levels of experience and unique, sometimes clashing, viewpoints while still making progress and maintaining a team environment that invigorates team members. Below are some of the roles we expect all teams to have.

• Students: Undergraduate and graduate students in any discipline at an accredited college or university who have not yet earned their chosen degree [at the time of Team Registration i.e. March]. Each team should have at least four students, with half of the students being undergraduates. Undergraduates include students working towards a combined bachelor’s/master’s degree. Postgraduate students, or postdocs, may not be counted as graduate students but may serve advisors, but not primary advisors.

  Team structure: Students are responsible for the primary work of a team. Several schools may combine to form a team and one school may have several teams.

• Faculty Advisors: Each team must work with at least two faculty members, one from a school of management or business school, and one from any other disciple including, but not limited to, science, engineering, social sciences, medicine, law, and government. Additional faculty members may also be listed as faculty advisors.
• Primary Faculty Advisor: One of the faculty members must be designated as the primary faculty advisor. She or he is ultimately responsible for the official registration of the team, the team roster, and payment of team fees. The primary faculty advisor will also be the designated primary emergency contact for the team.

Optional:

• Advisors: In addition to the required roles above, teams are encouraged to recruit non-faculty advisors, or simply advisors. Typical advisors include active and past entrepreneurs, faculty entrepreneurs on temporary leave, technical and non-technical industry practitioners and postdocs, legal advisors, policy and industry analysts, private equity (angels, VC's, PE funds) and corporate venture investors and anyone else that may provide advice and connect the team to a trusted network of advisors, potential customers, suppliers, partners, funding agencies, and regulatory authorities.

All participants are required to work hard to build positive contributions to society and have lots of fun.