Wednesday 1 December
Present: Stella Kin, Rachel Nichol, Christopher Sanderson
Apologies: Louise Anton
Next meeting: Thursday 2 December, 12-2, Project Room
1. Discussion of presentation draft
It was agreed that the slides should be as visual as possible, with team members talking around the images. Bullet points should be brief.
Allocation of slides:
Rachel - meet the team, presentation outline, Scotland's energy needs, proposal, summary
Stella - algae to consider, current process, ideal microalga, genetic engineering potential, algae cultivation, conversion into biodiesel
Louise - environmental and societal impacts (...)
Chris - competitors, challenges ahead
Bryan - business plan (Stella)
As Louise and Bryan have had problems getting to the university, the allocated tasks will be taken over by those in brackets.
Discussion and actions:
Scotland's energy needs - Research is complete and on blog. Rachel will work on the slides tonight
Genetic engineering potential - discussion revolved around whether we need to diversify or whether we should specialise. Due to time constraints it may be wiser to concerntrate on creating an algae strain that secretes oil.
Environmental and societal impacts - Louise will work on the slides tonight and send them to the team if she can't make it back to Aberdeen
Competitors - Chris will concentrate not only on 1st, 2nd and 4th gen, but also other 3rd gen options that have been discarded by us
Challenges ahead - more discussion is needed
Business plan - concern over finding accurate costs of, e.g. bioreactors, materials. May have to use very rough estimates in business plan. Genetic engineering will likely be contracted out due to overhead costs. Given the nature of the current research and the diversity of the strains of algae used, it will be difficult to accurately project yields. Mamen advised that if it is not possible, and costs are not easily obtainable, then we have to be clear on why we chose the option we did, and state all the advantages. The hope is that the investment will be paid off with partnership with private companies
2. Meetings to follow
Rachel has booked the project room, Thursday 2 December, 12-2, where we will talk through our scripts.
Next meeting Friday 3 December, presentation rehearsal
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