Team:Heidelberg/Supervisors

iGEM Team Heidelberg 2015

• Achievements
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• Notebook
• Parts
• Team
• Modeling
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Professor Eils is again the captain of the iGEM Heidelberg team. He provides the laboratories and all the required equipment. Besides, he will sponsor the traveling and participation costs. Thank you very much! The research interests of professor Eils lies in the field of the analysis and mathematical modeling of complex pathways in molecular biology. He can look back at a very successful career, as he is the head of the Department of Theoretical Bioinformatics in the DKFZ and working on computational oncology. Furthermore, he is the director of the Department of Bioinformatics and Functional Genomics of the IPMB at the University of Heidelberg. Alongside with professor Kräusslich and professor. Wolfrum, he is one of three founding directors of the BioQuant, as well as the leader of the Systems Biology Center and the representative of the FORSYS-Initiative of Heidelberg’s research network, the ViroQuant. He has won numerous awards; in particular he has been awarded the Biofuture price (approx. 1.2 Million €) by the BMBF for innovations allowing the graphical reconstruction of the eukaryotic mitosis process from 4D microscopy images and in the year 2005 he won the award for new innovative research by Helmholtz Society: “SystemsBiology of Complex Diseases”. Besides, he was one of the main organizers of the International Conference on Systems Biology in Heidelberg 2004 and he organized the German Symposium on Systems Biology 2009. His new engagement in the up-coming field of Synthetic Biology underlines the need for tight interdisciplinary work between experimentalists and theoreticians.

Computer engineer by university training (carried out in the University of Rome “La Sapienza”), Barbara has done her Ph.D. in molecular biology in the laboratory of Luis Serrano, at the EMBL. Her Ph.D. project consisted in constructing a synthetic human p53 network in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. She was post-doc in the laboratory of Victor Sourjik, at the ZMBH. During this time she investigated the self-organizing properties of the Min system, the protein machinery that in Escherichia coli defines mid-cell. Since November 2011, Barbara heads the Synthetic Biology group in the department of Roland Eils, at the BioQuant. Barbara believes in the power of synthetic biology to create new functional devises and to teach important lessons about real biological systems. She also thinks that combining theory and experiments is the best strategy to understand the molecular mechanisms driving biological processes. Barbara finds the iGEM competition truly exciting and she is very happy to mentor the young, motivated and enthusiastic students of the Heidelberg iGEM 2015 team!

Irina studied biology at University of Leipzig. After graduation she continued her studies at the University of Leipzig and earned her PhD in Immunology. Since 2003, she is the head of the Department of Environmental Immunology at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research. With her research group she investigates the influence of life style and environmental factors on immune system development in early infancy and consequences for disease risk later in children's life. Thereby, she is focusing on asthma & allergy development. In her spare time Irina always shares her thrill with the iGEM Team Heidelberg. Finally in 2015 Irina joined iGEM as a supervisor of the iGEM Team Heidelberg for the first time. During iGEM she always had passionate advice for the wet lab parts that we were working on. Her huge knowledge in molecular biology improved our understanding for the lab work.

Katharina did her bachelor’s degree at Leibniz University Hannover and obtained her master’s degree from the University of Heidelberg in Molecular Biotechnology. Now she is working on her Ph.D. in the group of Professor Andres Jäschke at the IPMB of the University of Heidelberg. She is working on the detection of modified RNA. She supported this year’s iGEM Team with her knowledge about the work with RNA in general and supervised the subprojects rape drug detection and the Toolbox establishment. No matter if it rained or the sun was shining, she always (and when I say always I mean it!) wore a dress.

Lukas learned the profession of a biology laboratory assistant at the DKFZ in Heidelberg. He worked in groups focusing on the fields of Immunology and Genomics. Afterwards he started to study Molecular Biotechnology at the University of Heidelberg to expand his knowledge. With his practical experience he could help the team solving problems that occurred during experiments. His huge expertise in cell culture was of great value for the team. During the iGEM competition he always had good ideas how to get constructs cloned that simply didn’t want to be cloned. He always had a special eye on the cell culture and supervised all the assays performed in mammalians. Besides help a all issues concerning the mammalian cells and mammalian vectors.

The soul for the team – Philipp’s warmhearted mind and his open ear he was able to make you happy even after a ton of failed PCRs. With his experiences made during iGEM 2013, a gorgeous amount of internships and his bachelor thesis at the Rösli group working on proteins, he quickly caught fire for the world of functional nucleic acids and provided us with good advice on the issues of cloning, the experiences of living in the lab and the toughness to survive wiki freeze. As an iGEM veteran he was also indispensable for the artistic part of working on poster and presentation. On top of being a great guy to have around the lab, who loves to sing songs at the barbecue and shares the fate of being a student of molecular biotechnology, he is also pursuing studies in mathematics. Therefore he did not only help a bunch of our team members to survive the math tests but also had the power to keep even those happy, who hate calculating pipetting sheets.

Stefan – Doctor Stefan – is a true multi-talent we are very pleased to have him as an advisor. He did not only earn a PhD in physics and studied medicine; he is now working as a system biologist at BioQuant. His keen mind and solid knowledge often helped us to look at problems from a new perspective. Besides he boosted our effort on modelling and taught us the skills to do quantitative FACS analysis, he provided us with valuable contacts to organize our talk evening and get in touch with relevant researchers. If any problem occurs, he is always patient to listen, analyze the craziest problem and provide us with all the necessary feedback and advice.

Ilia, who was a member of Heidelberg's 2013 iGEM team, obtained his Master's degree in Systems Biology from the University of Heidelberg and is currently pursuing his PhD, focusing on protein degradation in yeast. His knowledge about iGEM and being a yeast guru was very valuable for the whole team. He dropped by daily to see what the current issues were and to discuss how to solve them. Before he leaves you can be sure to hear Ilia say, “Well then good luck!”. He wins the prize for the fastest reply on emails!