Team:LASATX/Team
LASA High School: Senior Isaree Pitaktong is the founder and team captain of the LASA iGEM team, as well as current president of the LASA Synthetic Biology club. She loves learning about Anatomy and Physiology and Synthetic Biology, and plans on majoring in Biomedical Engineering, eventually attending medical school and becoming a trauma surgeon and researcher. Isaree was a delegate at the Brandeis Global Youth Summit on the Future of Medicine. She is also an Ambassador Girl Scout who has earned the Gold Award and enjoys eating Girl Scout cookies. Isaree is an aspiring second-generation nARE (nondescript Adhesive Removal Expert), and is devoted to peeling any sticker, anytime, anywhere. Isaree loves drawing, painting, sewing, baking, playing the piano and dancing – whether twirling around in the bathtub or performing a traditional Chinese fan dance on stage. She has now been dancing for 12 years with the Love of China School of Dance, performing at various locations including the Texas State capitol, Formula-1 US Grand Prix, and in the Esprit! show with the Tapestry Dance Company at the Long Center. She also has a wonderful Brown thumb for gardening (she calls it “the love that kills”). University of Texas at Austin: Freshman LASA Graduate (Class of 2015)
LASA High School: Senior Kisha Patel is a high school senior who has been passionate about the medical field and scientific research since her times of playing doctor with her little brother. Since that “era”, she has cemented her plans and aims to attain an MD PhD which would allow her to both practise and research medicine. She has participated in Science Olympiad since her times in middle school and has been able to medal in her events which include Chemistry Lab, Anatomy & Physiology, and Protein Modeling. She has also been active in research since her freshman year in high school through the Synthetic Biology Club and a Biomedical Engineering internship in which she works on tissue regeneration of the kidney and pancreas through the use of naive state stem cells. Since her time in middle school, Kisha has also been active in the field of clinical medicine in that she has been interning at a pathology lab and has had hands on experience with human tissue sectioning, various staining methods, histology, etc. She has also shown her interest in the field of medicine by taking various classes at school pertaining to Biology, Chemistry, and Mathematics. Aside from her scientific pursuits, Kisha has been playing tennis since elementary school and competes at the Regional level and has performed dance since she was in elementary school. Kisha also enjoys writing poetry and was a semifinalist in a national competition and has been published by the Poetry Society of America. She also loves to play the flute, which she picked up in the fourth grade, and has been self learning how to play the shehnai, the Indian oboe. Kisha also actively volunteers through the Red Cross, which she is president off, and at local hospitals where she also actively views neurosurgeries and various other procedures. In her freshman year, through the Red Cross, Kisha was able to lead a group of high school students to raise enough money to vaccinate a village in Africa against Measles and Rubella. Through these efforts, Kisha has adamantly decided to become a member of the Doctors Without Borders organization after she earns her academic degrees.
University of Texas at Dallas: Freshman LASA Graduate (Class of 2015)
LASA High School: Senior Sam Gunn is a LASA Senior who is very interested in biochemistry, math, and physics, so he reads about these subjects with most of his free time. He also enjoys playing soccer for his school team. He plans on majoring in Biochemistry.
LASA High School: Senior Like many others in the group, James takes avid interest in general biology, with future endeavours relating to the bioengineering/biomedical engineering (BME) field. Through the iGEM experience, he was able to further reaffirm his intrigue and fascination for such field of study. Outside, James is a LASA high school senior heavily involved in band (marching, jazz, concert) and has made All-State band, competing in various state-level music competitions/auditions. Born and raised in South Korea, he teaches English and basic biology at South Korea during his summers. While involved in various clubs and activities such as TEDxYouth@Austin, he also secretly loves building hand-crafted models in his free time at home and has built multiple large scale models.
LASA High School: Senior Ella is a senior who enjoys chemistry, calculus, cello, and choir. In addition, she spends much of her time studying Japanese. She competes in the Texas state speech contest and the National Japan Bowl, of which she is her team’s leader and club president. In 2014, she studied abroad in Japan for the summer, and while there, she continued her love of science by attending an afterschool class in English for her Japanese peers, getting to reexperience the material and lab skills she had learned before in another setting and language. Her future goals include graduating with a degree in civil engineering with an emphasis on the environment and using those skills to work around the world through NGOs in developing nations.
LASA High School: Senior Sally Jung is a senior in high school who loves nature. She plans to pursue a career in environmental science with focuses on hydrology, coral reefs, sustainability, and energy, and hopes to travel to places with lots of unique biodiversity, such as the Galapagos Islands, and Madagascar. By integrating health, environment, and education, she aims to create a cleaner world. She is the treasurer of the Red Cross Club and co-president of the Environmental Club, where she has helped maintain, grow, and build gardens in the front of the school. Currently, she is working with club members on a Mindfulness Trail Project and hopes to plant fruit trees around the school. She plays violin and is an active member of Austin Youth Orchestra. Sally has also been on the varsity tennis team since her freshman year, attending district and regionals many times. Outside of school, she volunteered and currently works for Thinkery, Austin’s Children Museum, teaching and playing with kids in STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, math) subjects and volunteering for Austin Korean School. You can find her every year at the annual It’s My Park Day event in March, reading a book, baking, looking for awesome DIYs (brownie mug cakes!), and actively tending to her home garden, wishing her mini fig tree would grow quicker and produce figs for her to eat. LASA High School: Senior Oliver Zhao plans on majoring in Biomedical Engineering, because it incorporates the disciplines that he enjoys the most: medical biology, physics, chemistry, and mathematics. He is also considering minoring in Chemical Engineering. Volunteering at the Seton Medical Center – where he performed equipment audits, restocking, and inventory for patient rooms on the 5th floor – has only strengthened his interest in the medical field. He was one of about 50 students who were selected to attend the Dell Medical School Health Sciences Camp, a one-week intensive educational joint program with the Austin Independent School District in which students participated in activities such as: lectures by various medical and health specialists, a clinical skills lab, and a hands-on human cadaver lab sponsored by University Medical Center Brackenridge. Motivated by a passion for medicine and a sense of purpose in helping others after seeing friends and family affected by medical conditions, he hopes to eventually go to medical school, but not before experiencing what Biomedical Engineering has to offer. He is an officer and a founding member of LASA Chinese Culture Club as well as the Service Project Chair for LASA Red-Cross. He also spends part of his time with LASA NaNoWriMo, a writing club. He is a member of the Microanalysis Society, and has attended the 2014 and 2015 Microscopy & Microanalysis Meeting, which attracts researchers and professors from around the world including Nobel Laureates. He ran six half-marathons, including the Austin Half Marathon consecutively for four years starting at the age of 14. He placed 8 out of 154 in his division (Male 19 and Under) in the 2014 Austin Half Marathon. His best time was 1:33:38 in the 2015 3M Half Marathon, and plans to run in the upcoming Austin Full Marathon in February. He also spends much of his summer and fall as part of the LBJ Marching Band, after learning how to play the flute three months prior to joining. Oliver has also played the viola in the LBJ Orchestra. He also enjoys playing the piano and pencil drawing. LASA High School: Senior Anna is a LASA senior who has interests in biology, organic chemistry, and writing. Since freshman year, she has participated in research internships including ones at Southwestern University, the Boston Leadership Institute, and the Dell Pediatric Research Institute at UT Austin. During her time at the Boston Leadership Institute, Anna worked with one of the founders and develops of BioBuilder, Jim Hendrix, to develop an intravenous bacteria that would aid in the resection of irregularly shaped tumors (such as those in the brain). The summer of her sophomore year she worked at the Center for Learning and Memory for UT Austin where she carried out behavioral and physiological assays on mice to determine the effects of Fragile X syndrome and certain types of brain cancers. In her time at the Dell Pediatric Research institute, she has worked on determining the effects of structural proteins HMGB on the efficacy of cancer therapeutics in the hopes that these proteins can be targeted in the future to create more efficient and proactive treatment. She also joined the team at the nonprofit Best Answer for Cancer to help distribute educational materials about integrative oncology. Anna is a member of the nationally ranked Science Olympiad team that won 3rd at the national tournament last May. She is also the Vice President of the Red-Cross club and a service chair for the National Honor Society. Outside of school she also loves fencing, archery, Kadril Russian dance, and writing. With her writing she has been recognized by national international magazines and literary societies. She hopes to double major in Human Biology and English in college and then continue to pursue an MD/PhD program so that she can be involved in translational oncology research. LASA High School: Senior Jasmine Stone is a founder and former co-president of the LASA Synthetic Biology club with Caleb Ellington, 2012-2014, which enriches the educational aspect of this iGEM team. She currently helps with iGEM website support and advises club officers. She helped come up with the general idea for the iGEM project. Outside of synthetic biology/ iGEM, she plans to major in computer science because she likes how logical programming is, and how if something goes wrong, it’s almost definitely the programmers fault. In the computer science vein, she is the co-president a women in computer science club. She is really interested in the brain and intelligence and wants to eventually go into computational neuroscience research or machine learning, and currently is involved in neuroscience research. Because she loves to come up with creative arguments and doesn’t mind having her worldview invalidated, she regularly seeks out philosophical discussions. Outside of school, she is mostly found in the pool in her 10th year swimming with the Austin Angelfish,a nationally ranked synchronized swimming team, and 3rd year as co-captain. She is also in her second year swimming with the LBJ/LASA swim team. She also loves to play violin, and had been awarded 'Outstanding Soloist' at state solo and ensemble, an honor only 200 musicians, and 14 violinists in the state received. She is a member of Austin Youth Orchestra, and is the Secretary and Public Relations officer for the LBJ/LASA orchestra. She enjoys volunteer tutoring through the math tutoring program at LASA, and also tutors outside of school. LASA High School: Senior Caleb is a founder and former president of the LASA Synthetic Biology Club which enriches the educational aspect of this iGEM team. He is Senior at LASA who is a part of cross country, track & field, ultimate frisbee, model UN, and computer science club, while holding leadership in marching band, the LASA national honor society, and the synthetic biology club. Outside of school, clubs, and iGEM work, Caleb has many other passions. He has played guitar for 9 years and piano for 2, and loves the outdoors, constantly running, hiking and camping. He earned his Eagle Scout rank this past year having built a dock for UT’s Brackenridge field station. In between hiking through Costa Rica or sailing across the Florida Keys with his scout troop, Caleb does research for the Dr. Hofmann bioinformatics and behavioral neurobiology laboratory at UT. He has been exposed to science from a young age, and from 7th grade on, he has used the majority of his summers for research in the Hofmann lab, this most recent summer authoring a paper currently being published on the effects of whole genome duplication and individual gene duplication on expression, looking at the evolution of the melanocortin receptor accessory protein, melanocortin 2 receptor, and melanocortin 4 receptor genes in salmonid fish and the cichlid Astatotilapia burtoni. He loves engineering and problem solving, which is why in his free time he codes pet projects and all sorts of languages, and plays chess. Lots of chess. He hopes to major in chemical engineering and computer science and go on to work on directed evolution of microorganisms, and genetic, biomolecular, and biochemical engineering, hoping to help in the cure of diseases like alzheimer's, cancer, and huntington's, and allow treatment and diagnosis of ailments in 3rd world countries. LASA High School: Junior Anusha Vavilikolanu is a devoted member of the LASA Synthetic Biology club. She wants to pursue a career in medicine and the biological sciences, participating in clubs like the renowned LASA Science Olympiad team. She is also the president of the LASA Bollywood club, exposing different influential Hindi movies to all of her classmates. Anusha even has 8 years of experience in both Bollywood dancing and Bharatanatyam (a style of classical Indian dancing) though she has been dancing for 10 years. In January 2015, she went to Tamil Nadu (the origin on Bharatanatyam) and performed in various spiritual temples, even appearing on live television. Even in paper art, Anusha has earned a few awards for her drawings. As for sports, she has earned various awards from swimming on a swim team, participated in gymnastics for a couple of years, and fulfilled the requirements for a junior black belt in Karate. LASA High School: Junior A biology/chemistry fan with interests in history, politics, and philosophy, Ujwal is a LASA junior who enjoys, among other things, working in the Ellington Lab, playing Quiz Bowl, and attending Model UN conferences.
LASA Graduate (Class of 2015) Sofia is taking a gap year to commit one year of service in Israel.
LASA High School: Junior A general science nerd who is always curious, Travis is a LASA junior who spends his time outside of school designing, and building robots for the FRC and FTC competitions, working in the Ellington lab with the synthetic biology club and soon Science Olympiad. While in school, he enjoys Math, Organic Chemistry, Physics, and a Contemporary issues class. The Contemporary issues class is the most interesting, as students discuss possible solutions to ongoing issues.The Team
We are a team based in Austin, Texas. Our team is composed of high school students, who attend Liberal Arts and Science Academy, and recently graduated high school students who are now undergraduate Freshmen. Our advisors and instructors are all based at the University of Texas in Austin. Take a look!
Isaree Pitaktong
Dylan Danzeiser
Dylan is a Freshman at the University of Texas at Austin.
Kisha Patel
Pia Sen
Pia is a Freshman at the University of Texas at Dallas and will be transferring to the University of Texas at Austin after the completion of her first semester.
Sam Gunn
James Choi
Ella Pettichord
Sally Jung
Oliver Zhao
Anna Savelyeva
Jasmine Stone
Caleb Ellington
Anusha Vavilikolanu
Ujwal Punyamurtula
Sofia Valdivieso
Travis Colbert