Team:NYU-AD/Attributions

Attributions

There were 4 main stages of development of our project:

  1. Brainstorming – It all started with the introduction to the basic genetics terminology and an introduction to the laboratory procedures. Then, there came the ideation and brainstorming, which covered a variety – from toxic substance detection to mould prevention – and finally, to the self-sustainable mosquito trap. This was the part we all contributed to with our ideas, which were developed over time in more detail. The final idea was the product of a completely different idea, but was right away recognized as the one which would get us to the stage of…
  2. Bio-development – after we gathered the data about the bio-components, the whole team moved to the lab. The main contributors, however, were Dhanya Baby, Shien Yang Lee and Tina Kim, especially when it comes to the part design and assembling. They were backed by Quan Vuong, who was elsewhere in charge of the administration procedures of ordering and keeping track of the parts in general. Since we had little marginal benefit from the rest of the team, which consisted mostly of engineers, that part moved to…
  3. Trap prototyping – From the beginning, it was clear we had a general idea of how we see our end product. The limitation of the resources we posed to ourselves gave us a lot of troubles and prompted us to be as creative as possible. This challenge was undertaken by Jovan Jovancevic, Krishna Gaire and Sahan Tampoe.
  4. Documentation-Both stages succeeded to their best abilities in the given time and it was time to organize the documentation. Here it showed particularly useful to have Muhammad Shujaat Mirza, who made the wiki page and enabled the world to see our work.

We would like to thank the following people for supporting us during this project in their respective domains:
  • Dr Kourosh Salehi-Ashtiani, for kind and patient mentorship and expertise – most of all – for believing in the pioneering work we have done for iGEM at the University
  • Joseph Koussa, for bearing with us through both brainstorming and in the lab; not only for answering our 2 am concerns and for relentless criticism, but also for great support. Through his “guided democracy,” he made us stand up for our ideas and show great critical thinking in order to, finally, arrive at the best project idea
  • Kenan Jijakli, for shedding the holy engineering light onto our discussions, for guiding us through both the basics of genetics and the lab experience and for understanding the different perspectives we had; coming from different backgrounds, and adapting to them accordingly.
  • Matthew Karau, for the help on the device making side – as a leading engineer in charge of the SuperLab, arguably the only fully equipped lab in the world where we could have worked day and night to materialize our idea. Also, we are grateful for the help in thinking about the possibilities, once our device would leave the lab and enter the real world.
  • Dr Michael Davis, for the help on improving upon our electric mesh and 3D metal printing a new version, for further product development
  • Farhana Goha, from NYUAD Undergraduate Research office, for enabling the funding for our Summer Research at the University.
  • David Scicchitano and Eve Johnston from the Science Department of NYUAD, who provided us with the major funding for the Jamboree and making our travel to Boston possible
  • Renee Dugan, for supporting this project from the administrative side and for approving the partial funding
  • Kyle Farley, who approved and recommended our project for Advancement Opportunities program, which provided partial funding for the Jamboree.
  • Julie Brookes , for supporting us from the administrative side while applying for funding.
  • Maria Vogel , for her help in designing the logo.
  • Prashant Sharma, for his help in making and editing the mosquito trap video.