Welcome to the Designer Genes Website: The Biotechnology Organization at Rutgers

Designer Genes the Rutgers Biotechnology Networking Tool is a student organization with a focus on career development and networking in biotechnology. The organization recognizes that the biotechnology industry is defined by sci entific, legal, regulatory, commercial and political fac tors and aims to address those topics through educational events. In a dedicated effort to better prepare students to the multidisciplinary field of biotechnology, we focus on enhancing student knowledge about a broad variety of topics in biotechnology. The organization is a partner of the Biotechnology Center for Agriculture and the Environment and works closely with the BIO-1 partnership network.

Speakers from places such as UMDNJ, Amersham Biosciences, Merck, Skanska Pharmaceutical Group, thinkBiotech LLC, as well as our own SEBS faculty, have addressed the Rutgers community on a range of issues. We organized visits to places such as Phytomedics Inc., the Biosafety Level 3 laboratory at UMDNJ, the Budweiser brewery in Newark, NJ, and the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Designer Genes also recognizes the growing public interest in applications of the science, and strives to encourage discussion of these topics. One such hosted di scussion was a forum featuring Dr. Michael Lawton of the Biotech Center and Dr. David Ehrenfeld from the Rutgers Evolution, Ecology and Natural Resources department. The seminar provided the Rutgers community with two differing perspectives about topics such as GM foods, stem cell research, and genetic pollution.