The Team

The DTU iGEM Team 2015 is composed of a group of ten motivated DTU students dedicated to exploring and sharing their passion for science. The team includes both Bachelor and Master students with a diverse set of nationalities and educational backgrounds in Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, Bioinformatics, Pharmaceutical engineering and Computer Sciences. Many of the team members are highly engaged in internationally recognized research groups, leading biotech companies or student organizations, where they have obtained valuable competences within science, programming, project management and communication.  Our team is unified by the shared goal of providing significant achievements within the field of synthetic biology.

The project officially started with an introductory iGEM meeting in January, facilitated by our supervisor Chris Workman. From then on our team met weekly with idea development until Mads and Pernille, came up with our project idea. Many months of project planning, fundraising, lab work and coding have lead to the product we now present for you. All laboratory work and presented activities documented on this wiki were performed by our team members and the three high school students unless stated otherwise.

We would like to thank our advisors who assisted us during the whole project and have provided invaluable advice and feedback. We would also express our thanks to everyone else who has supported us over the course project! Thank you for your expertise, facilities and materials. A full list of attributions can be seen below. 

Members

To read more about the members, click on their 

Mads Anderson

MSc Bioinformatics and Systems Biology (2^nd year) 

Mads is our software expert. In the iGEM team he is developing the Wiki Wizard and together with Pernille responsible for the overall planning of the project. During his studies he has been one of the lead developers on the oligo designer MODEST and the lymphocyte structure modelling tool LYRA. After iGEM he is going to do his master's thesis in lentiviral vectors at Aarhus University.

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Viktor Hesselberg-Thomsen

BSc Biotechnology (1^st year)

Viktor is not like most freshmen's in college. He has already won a young research competition, and on the DTU iGEM team 2015 he has been working hard mastering new methods in the laboratory from the first day. Viktor has done a lot of the lab work; and he was the first to succeed in the team at making our chassis Bacillus competent. Outside the lab, Viktor plays in a jazz band and then he would like to specialise in algae research.

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Karolina Kalbarczyk

MSc Pharmaceutical Design and Engineering (2^nd year)

Having a wide range of interests, being on the iGEM team was a perfect opportunity for Karolina to combine some of her passions like her interest in synthetic biology, innovative start-ups and sharing knowledge in an international team. Originally from Poland, she has already a lot of international experience, having studied in Germany, England and now Denmark. Karolina was not only actively involved in our human practice activities, but also holds the record for the highest DNA concentrations in miniprepping and successful Gibson assembling.

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Linas Kaminskas

MSc Computer Science and Engineering (2^nd year)

Linas is our expert within software development and the only non-biologically related student in our iGEM team. As he likes challenges, he decided to understand some Synthetic Biology problems and find some solutions for it. Linas tired to bridge between Computational Sciences and Biology, by creating a software enabling an easy design of oligos that would change a specificity of NRPSs, and be easy in use within scientic environment. 
  

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Tobias Løvgren Madsen

MSc Pharmaceutical Design and Engineering (2^nd year)

Tobias is a life-saver for most of the team members. He kept track of the fundraising, organises our social events, and designed our board to keep track of ongoing activites in the lab and on the project. Tobias also has the fantastic ability to always be happy and bring beers to event. When he went to China for month to study public communications, there was no Friday beer. Besides all the organisational work, Tobias studies Pharmacutical Design and Engineering, where he focusses on entrepenuership and project development.

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Pernille Myers

MSc Bioinformatics and Systems Biology, honors (1st year)
Project leader/developer

When Pernille came home from her vacation in July nothing so far had really succeeded in our lab. She got things turned around and made our first BioBrick in less than a week. When Pernille is not in the lab; she fancies biking or jogging to Novozymes to do more lab work and travelling. Her most memorable trip was living in California, where she did research for a biotech company, or perhaps when she was invited to the Noble Prize Award Ceremony because of her project on brown bananas.

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Scott Myers

MSc Biotechnology (2^nd year)

Scott is the team's protein chemist and the most excotic member of the team (he is from California). After his bachelor in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from University of California, Davis, Scott got a job in protein chemistry at a Danish biotech company. After seven years, he decided to move to Denmark to finish his masters in Biotechnology at DTU. Being the most through person in the lab, Scott is in charge of important experiments, purifications, analysis, and proofreading all text on the wiki as he basicly has a minor in English. He was also in charge of our BioBrick tutorial for the other Danish iGEM teams. Outside school he enjoys soccer, ultimate, brewing beer, and more soccer.

Vilhelm Krarup Møller

BSc Biotechnology (2^nd year)
 

Vilhelm is among the team members who have spent most of the time in the lab –he even brought his private coffee cup to university in summer. He always came up with new ideas to pursue as part of our Human Practice strategy and always knew what to discuss at our next meeting. Furthermore, he has contributed in the long process of making us an official Blue Dot project at DTU. He is planning to specialize in the field of bioinformatics and wants to do his thesis at the Center of Biological Sequence Analysis at DTU. When he takes a break from working on iGEM, he enjoys running and some more science.

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Michael Poulsen

MSc Pharmaceutical Design and Engineering (2^nd year)
 

Michael was a part of many subprojects within our Human Practice activities. Besides taking care about Economy and Finances, he was a helpful hand in the lab, office and kitchen... He occured to be a masterchef, caring about our empty stomachs after long days in the lab. Additionally, Michael used his grafic designer skills in creating our team logo and final banner for iGEM Giant Jamboree.

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Verena Volf

MSc Biotechnology (2^nd year)

Verena is a hardworking team member always prepared to attend the next meeting! She has been in charge of practicalities way ahead of the rest of the team ensuring facilities for every situation. An example of her commitment is her attendence at the BioBusiness Summer School 2015 to get a wider perspective of our policy and practice. She has been actively involved into our scientific project work in the lab but also responsible for organizing the BioBricks tutorial and taking care of practicalities. In her free time she enjoys bouldering, jogging as well as traveling and learning Danish.

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High School Students

Advisors and Supervisors

Attributions

Initial project phase

• Previous year’s iGEM team members Anne Sophie Laerke Hansen, Kristian Barrett and Kristian Jensen joined us during our first meetings, shared their experience and advice and helped us get going with our idea generation by introducing us to brainstorming techniques.
• Faculty members of DTU Systems Biology Morten Sommer, Thomas Ostenfeld Larsen and Rasmus John Normand Frandsen gave feedback on our initial ideas.
• Johannes Lundin Brockdorff gave feedback on running versions of our fund application drafts.
• Malene Bonné Meyer facilitated the contact with the high school students and helped us with managing the budget.

Human practice and BioBrick tutorial

• Regina Schürmann kindly provided us laboratory facilities during the BioBrick workshop.
• Kristian Davidsen was a great help during the BioBrick tutorial, helping both in the lab and answering questions concerning the tutorial.
• Mette Haagen Marcussen introduced different communication channels and helped us to define a strategy for streamlining our outreach intiatives as well as choosing our target group.
• Martin Mose Bentzen adviced in the assessment of ethics considerations in the content of our project. 
• A special thanks to Pablo Cuesta, whom participated actively as a member of the team until August. He contributed with the initial project phase and initiated the public outreach. 

Laboratory support

• Marzanna Pulka-Amin introduced us to the laboratory equipment.

Art and Design

• Mads Møller Madsen from PF foto took pictures of our team.
• Hero image source: http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?image=31542&picture=microbiology 

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