How can open science (OS) practices transform the way we learn, collaborate, and innovate in research? This project—funded by the ANR RESO 2025 program—investigates the international iGEM synthetic biology competition as a living laboratory to explore this question. With more than 4,000 interdisciplinary student teams participating since 2003, iGEM offers a rare longitudinal window into how collaborative and participatory research practices are cultivated, learned, and translated into scientific, technological, and social impact.
At the heart of our project lies a unique dataset: digital traces from team wikis, organizational metadata, surveys, and ethnographic interviews collected from 3,000+ iGEM teams. These materials allow us to study open science at multiple scales—from how individuals acquire collaborative skills and career identities, to how teams self-organize and share materials (such as BioBricks), to how the iGEM ecosystem as a whole evolves over time.
We ask: How do students collaborate in large-scale open environments? What structures promote learning, innovation, and equity? How do open, decentralized scientific cultures shape future research trajectories? Our research integrates network science, ethnography, scientometrics, and participatory design to understand these dynamics and make them actionable.
This work builds on previous efforts funded through the Bettencourt Schueller Foundation and now receives substantial support from ANR under the RESO 2025 call. The project is led by researchers from INSERM, University of Sydney and the Learning Planet Institute, with partners including the iGEM Foundation and regional French teams. It directly informs initiatives such as the BioConvergence Biofoundry and educational programs like the SDG Summer School.
Through the lens of iGEM, we aim to contribute not only to the science of science, but also to the design of more resilient, open, and collaborative research ecosystems. Results will inform national policy on open science, provide new tools for evaluating team-based learning and innovation, and yield best practices for organizing research training in an era of decentralization and interdisciplinarity.
📄 You can check our iGEM resource paper and the publicly available iGEM team dataset that we have collected from wiki pages.
🖥️ Finally, here are some slides about the project.
Interaction Data Lab 