Difference between revisions of "Team:elan vital korea/members"

I’m Young Chan Kim. I love the Big Bang Theory. The drama, I mean. When I’m not watching it, I read books, mostly science and math books. It’s exciting, but it’s sad sometimes, to realize that they’ve got everything nailed down. What am I supposed to contribute to the body of knowledge when they know everything? Science should not be all about rote memorization and recitation, but about discovery and invention.

It’s my second time attending iGEM. Last year, I researched one of the worst nightmares of humanity, MRSA. It’s deadly bacteria as it acquired resistance to antibiotics. If antibiotics are the fruit of heroic efforts to save humanity from disease and death, then antibiotic-resistant bacteria like MRSA are the Mother Nature’s reaction, the Nature Strikes Back. Bacteria, like all other living organisms, evolves. Humans evolve, too. But, bacteria, by virtue of being so small and living so little, evolves a lot faster than bigger competitors like humans. That’s why we have antibiotic-resistant bacteria. So, it’s very Promethean, like endless swing between victory and defeat, heroism and tragedy. (WHO seems to say a different story that we have them partly because no new antibacterial drug is invented after the discovery of Daptomycin in late 1980s. That is, because scientists got lazy, but it’s a different story.)

It means the next antibiotic-resistant bacteria you encounter may not be the one that you’re familiar with. It most likely have evolved since! To recognize them in all of their evolutionary diversity, we must go deeper. That’s what we did last year: find the DNA sequence that gives the bacteria the antibiotic-resistance. This year, we took one step further: let a bacteria tell us if antibiotic-resistant bacteria is found in their neighborhood, using their own communication method, quorum sensing. Isn’t it fascinating? That’s what I love about iGEM and synthetic biology. You can actually make that happen! You can make an E coli to report to us if they find any antibiotic-resistant bacteria in their neighborhood. You create a life that does what you want! It’s a brave new world!

In addition to being a zealous iGEMer, I am a senior at Stanford University Online High School. Sometimes, you can find me playing viola, ice hockey or drawing pictures, but what you find of me in concert halls, ice hockey fields or atelier won’t excite you as much than in labs, libraries or even classrooms. Not in a Sheldon or Leonard way like in the Big Bang Theory, mind you, but because I’m a man of curiosity, easily excited over small discoveries, delicious food and fun stories and happy just being with friends who understand each other.

My name is Soo Jung Lee. My whole life can be characterized by one word, “diversity”. It not only represents the diverse environment I was able to encounter since childhood, but also has been the driving force for all my past achievements.

Although I’ve lived all my life in South Korea, the open-mindedness with which I view the world stems from numerous overseas travel experiences in almost 20 different countries and the five years I spent at an international school. The early exposure to cultures and people from various countries had a profound impact on my life and also served as a basis for my decision to enroll in the international program at Hankuk Academy of Foreign Studies, a boarding school in Korea.

My interests cover a wide range of fields from academics to music, films and Baduk, but currently my major passion lies in mathematics and science. In math, I especially like algebra and geometry.

Complicated geometry problems can almost never be solved by a single-step calculation but once you reach a “Eureka” moment after staring into the figure for hours and applying every possible formula on it, the answer is just around the corner. Throughout my high school years, I represented Korea in many international competitions such as the IRML, WMTC and HMMT. In the 2015 HMMT, I led the Korean team as the captain and ranked individual 33rd, the first time ever for a Team Korea member to place in the top 50. Furthermore, I am a co-founder of the Korea Youth Math Association and am a member of the KGSEA Math Circle.

As for sciences, I have written 4 research papers, hold 3 patents, worked as an intern for 2 labs and won awards in numerous competitions. To name a few, I won the gold medal in the national round of the International Environmental Project Olympiad, and with that topic wrote a research paper and presented it at the ICEEA conference. Here I was the only student yet won the Best Paper Award.

While my interests in science were mostly focused on chemistry and physics, iGEM opened up a totally new scope for me. As a member participating in iGEM for the second time, I am grateful for both the professional knowledge and cooperative teamwork iGEM has provided. Synthetic biology is a newly emerging yet rapidly growing branch of science, and does not exist in nature yet creates mechanisms of life on Earth. My two consecutive years of iGEM led me to develop lab techniques that would otherwise never have been acquired until years later. This experience is also the main motive behind my hopes of majoring in biomedical engineering. My past two years would have been incomplete without iGEM, and I am grateful for making an end to high school with iGEM.