TU Delft iGEM Team of 2015

Team Members

Our team consists of nine ambitious students with interdisciplinary backgrounds from Delft University of Technology and Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences. Hover or click on each of our photos to find more information about us.

Max van't Hof

Hi! After doing the bachelor Life Science & Technology and being board member of the study association for one year I'm currently doing the master Life Science & Technology. I'm the science manager of this year's team. For me iGEM is a nice practical application of my master and also a good way to learn more about other subjects like policy & practice, fundraising and design.

Stefan Marsden

After my Bachelor in Chemistry at the University of Basel (CH), I was looking for a new challenge which I found in the Life Science & Technology Master and the iGEM competition. Biotechnology is a powerful tool to drive innovation towards greater sustainability in the chemical industry. My role is the scientific specification of our construct and hardware requirements for it to be put into practice. During my free time I fence saber on national level and I recently participated as a dancer in a theater production.

Tudor Vlas

Hey! I enrolled into iGEM because I saw it as a really challenging project, especially with respect to my background. I finished Automation and Computer Science at UT Cluj-Napoca (Romania) and am currently doing a Management of Technology Master's at TU Delft. Within iGEM, I am responsible of the Wiki and help with Policy and Practice efforts. I like to play football, video games and meet people from all over the world.

Samantha Basalo Vazquez

After completing my Bachelor in Chemical Engineering, I switched to the Master Life Science and Technology as I became intrigued by the eco-friendly production of useful products made by bacteria. With a prior background in chemical modeling, the position of modeling manager was the best fit for me! Besides my studies, I enjoy painting, swimming and travelling.

Hector Sanguesa Ferrer

I am an enthusiastic student from Morella, Spain, who is working hard for the Master program in Life Sciences and Technology. After some years studying my Bachelor’s degree in Barcelona, I moved to Delft looking for new experiences in biotechnology. Here I had the great opportunity to join the iGem team, where I am responsible of safety issues and lab management. In my free time, I enjoy doing sport and reading; I could say I enjoy playing football as much as I enjoy science.

Michelle Post

Ciao, I am an ambitious, motivated and open-minded student with interest in both the biotechnology and science communication. Being the policy and practice manager gave me the excellent opportunity to explore both sides; a perfect combination between science and communication. Besides iGEM I really enjoy singing in my jazz band ‘The Bowties’, cooking delicious dinners for my friends and drinking wine or Belgian beers.

Liana Uilecan

Hi! I am Liana, a Computer Science Engineer from Romania. I am currently doing my Master in Management of Technology. I joined iGEM because of its multidisciplinarity long term project. I am the team leader and part of the wiki and policy and practice teams. Along iGEM I enjoy travelling and cooking (eating :) ) delicious Italian and Japanese food.

Marit van der Does

Hi. I'm a third year bachelor Nanobiology student . The reason I joined iGEM was to get more practical experience. I learn a lot during my study programme, but I also wanted to learn how to use that knowledge. I am the Public Relations Manger of the team, but I also help a lot with the modelling and the lab work.

Anne Rodenburg

I'm a fourth year student, studying biological and medical laboratory studies. I joined the team to gain more practical experience, and insight in different subjects. Together with the entire team, I believe that we'll be able to set up a great project. I am the Fundraising and Budget Manager of the team.

Besides all the hard work in the office and lab, we became friends and did a lot of activities with the team. It was a great experience to learn more about each other.

A team is not only about getting the work done, but also about trust and having fun. To work on our teamwork and spirit we did some team sports like beach volleyball and basketball. After intensive sporting we always enjoyed beers.

We also had beer time during the hottest day of the summer, when we took a day off and relaxed at the beach of Scheveningen. Additionally, we all enjoyed the free barbecue with drinks in company of the Netherlands’ very occasional sun after the business case.

Team Advisors

The team is advised by experts in the fields of biotechnology, bionanoscience and applied physics.

Dr. Anne Meyer

ing. Esengül Yildirim

Dr. Timon Idema

Jorine Eeftens MSc.

Dominik Schmieden MSc.

Helena Shomar Monges MSc.

Team Members Attributions

During the iGEM Project we each contributed to the final result of the Biolinker. From organizing events, to working in the lab, hardware, modeling or policy and practice, credits go to the whole Biolink team.

Liana - Team Leader

As the team leader I was overseeing project progress and keeping track of deadlines. Held weekly report meetings and ensured that the project is going well as a whole. Organized Jamboree travel arrangements. Programmed most of the wiki website, added content and helped design it. Helped individual managers in their tasks - worked with Michelle on the Policy & Practice case study, helped Anne with organizing Fund Raising, helped Marit with PR efforts. Contributed to good team cohesion and ensured that communication goes smoothly, within the team, with supervisors and supporters, and with other project stakeholders.

Max - Science Manager

I have worked with several others on the scientific background of the project and formulating the goals. This also involved the development of assays needed to assess whether we actually achieved these goals. Next to this I have worked a lot in the lab on different aspects, ranging from standard plasmid isolation and restriction/ligation to imaging samples with the spinning disk microscope. I really enjoyed working on the design of e.g. promotional material, presentations and the hardware manual. Further I presented at the RIVM/Rathenau event and will present at the Jamboree. Additionally, I have helped with development of the 3D printer and financials, although most credits go to fellow team members.

Hector - Lab Manager & Safety Manager

As Lab Manager, my function inside the group has been the design and coordination of the experiments performed in the laboratory. Also, I have been involved in the supply of the necessary materials for the project. On the other hand, as Safety Manager, I have been checking the regulations that apply to every module of our project, and checking their fulfillment in the working area. Specifically, the project parts where I worked were: lab setup, cloning experiments, characterization experiment, modeling counseling, safety forms fulfillment, protocol design, presentation storyline writing and wiki content writing. Furthermore, I actively helped the other team members in punctual tasks along the summer.

Samantha - Modeling Manager

As the Modeling Manager, I was responsible for translating the biological and chemical processes leading to biofilm formation in mathematical models. This included developing a model able to predict the protein production capacity of our cells and developing a model able to estimate the strength of our formed biofilm. In order for the modeling to have good synergy with the lab, I designed and performed experiments supporting the biological modeling. Furthermore, I interpreted and statistically analyzed part of the experiments and made the comic images throughout our wiki trying to explain our project in an accessible manner. Finally, it was my idea to build our 3D printer with K’NEX and subsequently build our first prototype.

Stefan - Hardware Manager

As the Hardware Manager of this project my task was to gain an overview of current bioprinting literature in order to design and lead the experiments in the wetlab connected to our prototype. This included identifying relevant parameters and continuously optimizing the conditions under which we could achieve the best results with our prototype 3D printer using bacterial bioink. The printer prototype itself was built by Samantha, Anne and Marit. Characterisation of movement and performance was my task again. In the design phase I was largely involved in developing the project idea and designing the biobricks required to meet our goals. Following this, I mostly spent my time in the wetlab working on the Interlab Study and cloning the devices for our biobricks. Finally I was partly involved in modeling and policy and practice, but most credit must be attributed to other team members there.

Michelle - Policy and Practice Manager

As the Policy and Practice manager I was responsible for finding all interesting applications for our project. For the data collection, required for the “Business Plan” and “Expert’s opinion”, I searched for, contacted and interviewed researchers, scientists and managers. I really enjoyed working with Tudor writing all the content on the Policy & Practice part. Furthermore, I was responsible for organizing our stand during ‘A Day of Wonder’, the business case and designing the workshop for the Science Centre Delft. During the RIVM/Rathenau event, Max and I presented and discussed our project. Next to this, I was responsible for the idea and design of the P&P tool and for setting up the P&P collaborations. I supported Marit also with PR activities, such as talking with the press advisors of the TU Delft and the communication advisor of our faculty. Additionally, I have helped with the financials and lab journal reporting, although most credits go to fellow team members.

Tudor - Wiki Manager

Designed and supervised how the wiki was built. Helped Liana with implementing website functionality, layout and adding content. Based on literature review, market analysis and data collection (questionnaires and interviews), wrote the “Business plan” and “How to write a business plan” sections. Helped with designing questionnaires and sending them out to researchers, scientists and managers, and contributed to analyzing responses. Helped Michelle with policy and practice efforts and wiki content writing, including ethics, regulations, outreach and overview.

Marit - PR Manager

As PR manager my function was managing contact with the community. Therefore I placed weekly, or more often, updates on facebook and twitter. I went with Michelle to the communication advisors of the TU Delft, and with their help arranged radio interviews. I also coordinated our project movie, and managed to get articles on different websites and magazines. Besides PR, I helped support others in their managing tasks. For policy and practice I joined Michelle with a few of her interviews, including organising the day of wonder, and we are going to organize a workshop in the Science Center of Delft for kids. For the modelling, I wrote the biofilm strength model, and helped develop the other models. For the wet lab, I helped whenever needed, such as doing the western blot experiment and the TEM microscopy. For Hardware, i arranged that we get all the Knex, and was part of the designing process of the 3D-printers, creating the manual, and joined Anne to Groningen. For the Interlab studies, I made the statistical analysis of the data.

Anne - Budget and Fundraising Manager

As my manager name suggests, I handled all financial administration for the team, and acquired the sponsors. For the wet lab, I helped in the lab with cloning, and digitalising the lab book. For hardware, I made the “Building the printer” movie, helped design the last version of the printer with Marit, and organized the collaboration with Groningen with Marit and Biolinker. For Policy and Practice, I helped Michelle with the Day of Wonder, the collaborations with iGEM teams, and the RIVM/Rathenau. Besides my main function, I regularly checked documents for spelling mistakes (my second function being the spelling checker). For the final presentation, Max and I will be presenting.

Media

Our team received a lot of media attention especially due to our printer.

Media attention

Apart from telling our story on the national radio, we were featured in the written press. We appeared in the Physicus Applied Physics Article, the AD Delft Newspaper and the HRO Website. With all this media attention, we were motivated that we are working for a meaningful, interesting subject!

Radio:

Articles:

Internet

The K'NEX Story

In the Hardware page we explained how we arrived to the final design of our 3D Printer, The Biolinker. Here you can read about our adventure in finding the pieces to build our Biolinker. This page also shows our media interaction with respect to our Biolinker: radio interviews and presence in newspaper, articles or websites. We were surprised to find so much enthusiasm for our project, and we hope that we made synthetic biology and bioprinting more well known to society.

Building the Biolinker was really exciting, but suddenly we had a practical problem: we didn’t have enough K’NEX to finish this design. With what we had until then, the printer could move on the X axis (structure on the left side of the picture). We ran out of K’NEX when working on the Y axis, the structure on the right side of the picture.

At first, we wanted to buy new K’NEX online. However, the packages specific to our needs were expensive . Thus, we decided to reach out to people via media on twitter, facebook, and radio. In a few minutes we had already retweets, and in no time we got an email from 3FM (national Dutch radio station) for a live request on national radio. So Sunday morning we were live on the radio show Weekend Wijnand. Within an hour, Marijn van Iersel (an 11 year old boy () called the radio station, willing to donate us his K’NEX.

In the same day we were called from another radio station, Omroep West for an interview about our project in their morning show. We also featured on their website. Ever since the radio interviews we kept receiving emails from people all around the country willing to donate K’NEX. We’d like to thank them by adding their photos and short stories here.

Jaqueline Oolthuis. This very dedicated lady lives in Doetinchem. She was very interested in our project, sending us a crate of K’NEX. She was excited to see the printer when it is finished!

On the 18th of August we made a tour through South Holland to collect all the K’NEX. It was very nice to see that so many people were interested in our project and willing to help. Jan was the first person who reacted on our twitter message. He works at Aerospace Engineering (TU Delft) and he had the specific red gears that we desperately needed.

Laura van Dijk. After Jan we drove to Den Hoorn. After getting lost a few times we finally found the right house. Here we found a 6 year old boy. His mother told us that he was bored of playing with the K’NEX within a few weeks. He definitely had no idea what cool stuff you can build with K’NEX, so we invited him to come by the office to see that.

Jelle Dijkstra. Then we travelled farther to Oegstgeest. At first, there was no one home. Jelle told us to that he had left the parts next to the front door. Luckily, he just came home when we found the package, so we could thank him personally.

Marjan Berkheij. We were already really satisfied with the amount of K’NEX we got, but when we arrived at the next address in Katwijk, we could not believe our eyes. Marjan had 5 boxes full with K'NEX. She told us her sons were already in their twenties, so they don’t use it anymore. She wanted to give it to charity, an orphanage for example, so we are going to look for a good charity organization to give it to.

Trees Prins.We drove already for a few hours through the Netherlands. For the last meeting we drove to Den Haag to Trees Prins. Now the car was full and we are ready to drive back to the office.

Leontien Smith and Max. On Friday Leontien Smith came by with her 12 year old son Max. We immediately saw that he was a real expert. He had a lot of ideas how we can improve the printer, so we sat down with him and started building. We really welcomed his advice. Afterwards, we gave him a tour through the building. He enjoyed the day very much, and so did we!

There were also people who brought the K'NEX to us, and could immediately have a look at the printer we’ve got so far. We’d like to thank Ronald Kest, Ina Venema and Iris Meijhorst for their donation!

Sorting the K’NEX

After we received everything, we started to sort through thousands of parts, some of which we didn’t know existed. We founds lots of useful parts and after sitting for a few hours with most of the team, we were done. The result was amazing, we had a sea of K’NEX to chose from for designing the perfect DIY 3D printer.

Donating to Charity

The K'NEX we received have been put to great use, as shown on the hardware page .Thanks to the generosity of so many people, we received far more K'NEX than we required. We would therefore like to put the "left-over" K'NEX to good use. We have already donated one of the printers to the Science Center of Delft, but we want to do more. Therefore we have decided to donate the K'NEX to a suitable charity, so that others will be able to use their imagination and creativity to make whatever they desire.