2022 Fungus Olympics

Register your lab
Enroll up to six strains per team.
Receive devices
Receive microfluidic devices and a microscope to your lab.
Real time racing
Upload images to the cloud.
Rapid analysis
Analyze fungal growth speed and invasion patterns.

Sign up now

Name

Group Leader

Institution

Our Mission

Mold, yeast, mushroom. Beer, cheese, antibiotic. Thrush, rot, blight. Fungi touch so many aspects of our lives! Learning more about how fungi grow, search for food, and overcome obstacles is important for health, agriculture, and industry. The First Fungus Olympic Games will pit filamentous fungi against each other as they navigate a microscale obstacle course. The fungus that is fastest, strongest, and most agile will be the winner. But, everyone will benefit from the insights gained in this crowd-sourced, worldwide tournament.

Sign up your lab

Receive equipment

Schedule a time for your lab to receive a microscope and microfluidic devices to be used in the race.

Upload images to cloud

Microscope images will be uploaded to the cloud for real time analysis and tracking.

Get race results

Winners will be determined for multiple race categories.

Who's Participating?

Several labs from across the world participated in the 2018 FungusOlympics.

How It Works

Now that you signed-up for the Olympics, what next?

We will also contact you at the beginning of January about the fungi you want to represent your team in the Olympiad. You could enroll one favorite or up to six, your choice.
We will then contact you again by email to schedule a time for when you will receive the microfluidic devices and microscope to your lab. You will have the microscope in your lab for five days, after which you will have to return the microscope.
While you have the microscope and devices in your lab, you will have to load the fungus in the devices and start the time-lapse microscope. We will post the protocols for how to load the devices online. We plan on having some instructional videos as well. You will have a dozen devices, so you could practice on a few of these before the “official” experiments.
Once you start the microscope, images will be uploaded automatically through the internet, into a cloud database. The microscope is built such that you could place it in an incubator, keep it on the bench, or put it in the refrigerator, any place that you think is better for your fungi. While the experiment runs, you will be able to watch the images being acquired from your smartphone, through the cloud database. So, you could be at the pub and know what happens in the lab. More details to follow…
The images in the cloud will be analyzed automatically, and you will receive an early feedback of how well you did, compared to other teams. You will receive a more thorough analysis a few weeks later. Our first goal is to decide on the winner quickly after the end of the race. Our second goal is to gather all the results and quantify the details of growing fungi.
Once all the data is quantified, we will share it with all participants. We will discuss this and work together to improve the Olympics for the following year.
Follow us on twitter: @FungusOlympics or visit our website often for updates.

Eligibility, Authorships, and Prizes

Teams can come from academic institutions, industry research labs, government labs, school groups — anyone with a fungus to enter in the games and a place to conduct the experiments. All teams must submit full strain information on the fungus they enter, agree with uploading their images to the cloud, and agree to the publication of the data generated. We plan to prepare a manuscript describing the results of the Fungus Olympic competition. All teams will be contacted to see if they wish to participate in the analysis of Fungus Olympic data and writing process. Those who make a substantial contribution will be included as authors, others will be acknowledged.

We hope to award prizes in for the winners in various categories. We are still seeking sponsorship, so don’t yet have details on what the prizes will be, in addition to awesome bragging rights, of course.