Lawrence Lee and members of his research group at Single Molecule Science have mentored yet another team of undergraduate students to victory at the international biomolecular design competition for students – BIOMOD.

With the recent win of the Capsid Constructors, the Lee Lab has now mentored three BIOMOD teams that took out the Grand Prize, and another that won a Gold Class Project Award at the student competition founded by the Wyss Institute at Harvard University. That’s a remarkable success rate given Lawrence has only been involved in this annual research competition since 2014.

“The true benefit comes from giving these students the opportunity to engage in the process of innovation and discovery, which can be difficult to provide in depth at an undergraduate level,” says Dr Lawrence Lee about the BIOMOD competition.

[Pictured right: Capsid Constructors with their mentors from the Lee Lab]

The winning 2017 BIOMOD team –made up of undergraduate students from UNSW Faculties of Science, Enginnering, Arts & Social Sciences, and Law – investigated how the protective shell of the HIV virus assembles spontaneously by recreating it in the laboratory using protein building blocks.

The teams are assessed by a panel of judges on their ability to communicate their research project, including in their project website and video, and presentations at the competition. This year, the competition was held at the University of California San Francisco.

To bring home the Grand Prize, the Capsid Constructors beat 22 teams from different universities around the world including Canada, US, Japan, China, UK and Europe.

– Sue Min Liu

Click here to read story by Cecilia Duong