25 students participated in this year's Summer crash course in Synthetic Biology at the University of Cambridge. The course included lectures and hands-on laboratory sessions covering modern microbiology and molecular genetics techniques, software modelling, literature review, presentation and project-based challenges. The students were drawn from across Biology, Engineering and the Physical Sciences in Cambridge, with visitors from Harvard, KAUST and the Royal College of Arts in London.

Lectures
Introduction to Synthetic Biology (Jim Ajioka), Bacterial gene expression (Jim Haseloff), Molecular Biology techniques (Jim Ajioka), Reporter genes (Jim Haseloff), Experimental Design (Gos Micklem), Sequencing and Synthesis (Gos Micklem), Microbial Diversity (Keith Johnstone), Open Source technologies (Jim Haseloff), Synthetic Parts, Genes & Circuits (Jim Ajioka and Jim Haseloff), Stochasticity: Noise in Biological Systems (Lorenz Wernisch), Biological Modelling & SBML (Nicolas Le Novere), Modelling for Synthetic Biology (Andrew Phillips), Quorum Sensing (Rita Monson), Synthetic Logic (Gos Micklem), Standards in Synthetic Biology (Dean Madden, National Centre for Biotechnology Education), Microbial Biosensors (Jim Ajioka), Appropriate Technology and Development (David Grimshaw, Practical Action), Anhydrobiosis (AlanTunnacliffe), Chemotaxis (Dennis Bray), Microfluidics and microdroplets (Wolfgang Bauer).