Participating in the iGEM competition is a unique opportunity for students to gain research and career skills. iGEM is best described as part synthetic biology research project, part robotics competition for biology, part entrepreneurial pitch contest, part bioethics course, and part engineering design project. Students are expected to explore their own project ideas, reflect on and explain how their proposed solution to a problem would benefit society, engage in outreach to stakeholders, and operate as a team to complete proof-of-principle research. After working on their research during the spring and summer, teams create a project website and give poster and oral presentations at a Jamboree in mid-fall with >350 teams from all over the world participating.