University of São Paulo

Our team would like to thank the support of IFSC/USP (Institute of Physics of São Carlos / University of São Paulo) to our project. In addition to providing us the necessary infrastructure for the accomplishment of the project and a great faculty available to our academic counseling, the institute helped us financially - paying for the team registration fee at iGEM 2015, as well as the participation of one of the members at the convention in Boston. A special thank to Prof. Dr. Tito José Bonagamba, the director of the IFSC/USP.
Additionally, we are grateful for the support of the pro-rectors of graduation and research, Prof. Dr. Antonio Carlos Hernandes and Prof. Dr. José Eduardo Krieger. Thank you for believing in our team and for supporting the development of innovative projects in Brazil.
All the experiments were performed on the following laboratories of the University of Sao Paulo, campus Sao Carlos:
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Our team sincerely appreciates the availability of the space, equipments, instruments, and reagents that were offered to us to make the experiments possible.

Advisor and Instructor Support

All research was led by the student members of Brasil-USP 2015 iGEM team. Nevertheless, we had the constant support from our advisor Prof. Dr. Ana Paula Ulian Araújo. We thank her for having intensively participated on the development of the project, attending meetings and providing us her time, despite her busy schedule. She has been crucial to refining our project ideas and solving general issues.
We also thank our advisor Dr. Juliana Cancino who was essential for the performance of the Flow Cytometry experiments.

Additional Professors and University Staffs

We would like to thank Prof. Dr. Antônio Burtoloso for discussing and analysing the feasibility of the chemical reactions we proposed to transform the product ODTD into a fuel. His expertise in organic synthesis helped us through challenging steps and guided us to plan and conduct the experiments in a safe and efficient manner. He also offered his laboratory and tools so that the experiments of the ODTD to final product transformation could be performed promptly.
We thank Prof. Dr. Adriano Delfi Andricopulo for providing funds to buy essential enzymes for our experiments.
We are also very grateful to USP Innovation Agency for all the explanation about intellectual property formalities and our guidance on entrepreneurship subjects. Our team would like to thank very much Mauricio Schiabel, a employee at USP who has assisted us with the financial bureaucracy.

External Support

We would like to thank Prof. Dr. Dieter Jendrossek from the University Stuttgart (Germany) for having kindly donated us the plasmids with the cloned roxA and lcp sequences , and receiving one of our members at his office in Germany.It is really satisfactory to know that Science has no boundaries, and aid may come from anywhere in the world.
In addition, we thank Prof. Dr. Denise Bevilaqua from the State University of Sao Paulo (UNESP), campus Araraquara for also having kindly donated us strains of Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans, and for having patiently explained the specific conditions to cultivate them. Such bacteria would be used for the experiments of rubber devulcanization.
Thank Prof. Dr. Teresa Cristina Zangirolami from Federal University of Sao Carlos (UFSCar), campus São Carlos for helping us with the bioreactor informations, as well as bioprocesses and separation procedures. There information were very important to guide us through the scaled up processes.
We also thank Braskem for helping our team with intellectual property and giving us entrepreneurship advices, but specially Mateus Schreiner Garcez Lopes for opening the gates of the company and believing in us.
In the Woman in Science survey, we counted with the essential support of Prof. Dr. Marcia Barbosa from Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). Besides her research in the anomalies the water, she also investigates about gender equality in brazilian science. She is vice-president of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics Working Group on Women in Physics. In 2013, Marcia was named in L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Awards Laureate for Latin America. Thank you very much for the participation and for discussing questions that could improve our survey and interviews.
We sincerely thank everyone who helped in some way our project to be concretized!
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