Difference between revisions of "Team:Harvard BioDesign/Team"

Revision as of 16:02, 28 August 2015

Prologue by HTML5 UP

We are the Harvard iGEM team of 2015.

Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.
-Vincent Van Gogh

The Students

ATLANTA—Casually holding the drink between her index finger and thumb, a Delta Airlines flight attendant is at this moment trying to pass a cup of cranberry juice over your laptop, sources aboard the aircraft have confirmed. The plastic receptacle, which is filled nearly to the brim and rippling due to mild turbulence, is reportedly being extended across your expensive and relatively new laptop in the direction of the person seated next to you, who is currently nodding off and unaware his beverage has arrived. As the flight attendant leans in, dangling the juice above the computer containing work files and family photos you have not backed up anywhere else, witnesses are reporting that a passenger two seats behind you is trying to squeeze by both her and the beverage cart. Sources added that all of this is happening as the plane speeds at 500 miles per hour 40,000 feet above the earth. At press time, the person next to you was seen attempting to accept the drink and pass back a credit card with the same hand. -The Onion

WASHINGTON—Declaring that this is the last time they ever hope to speak of the aggravatingly enigmatic substance, astronomers from NASA announced Thursday that they are just going to go ahead and say that dark matter is nitrogen. “Look, nitrogen is a pretty stable element that’s fairly inert, so we’re ready to just come out and say that’s probably what makes up about 85 percent of the matter in our universe and finally move on,” said Dr. Louis Marshall at a morning press conference, adding that, after spending millions of dollars and countless hours over the past eight decades trying to solve its mysteries, scientists are “completely fucking finished” with the astronomical phenomenon. “It’s a nice odorless gas that’s plentiful in our atmosphere and our galaxy, and that’s good enough for us. So there, we figured it out. Any questions?” Before walking away from the lectern, an exhausted Marshall added that dark energy was gravity and that the formula for a grand unified theory was E=10.-The Onion

WESTON, CT—Visibly shocked and repulsed by her own behavior as she sat questioning the type of person she is deep down, unsettled 2-year-old Ellie Ritter admitted to reporters that she had no idea what compelled her to bite her friend on the face Thursday. “I honestly don’t know what came over me. I know Jacob took the train I was playing with, but I usually handle that kind of thing okay—but this time I...I bit him,” said a shaken and bewildered Ritter, sitting wide-eyed on a floor mat at her daycare as she vehemently asserted that she had no prior knowledge of this dark, disturbing place within her. “I mean, this is Jacob we’re talking about. He’s my friend, my playmate. And I just went straight for his forehead like an animal. Jesus, what is wrong with me?” At press time, the unnerved toddler was staring uneasily down at her trembling, fingerpaint-covered hands and contemplating what other horrors she was capable of. -The Onion

Sylvia is a rising junior at Harvard College concentrating in Neurobiology. She is from North Potomac, MD and went to Thomas Wootton High School where her area of expertise lied in computer science and graphic design. She had worked previously at the National Institute of Health doing a range of projects from researching the progression of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis to data analysis of hemophilia patients. Her passions however lie somewhere between studying human behavior, artistic expression, and not being “normal.” She enjoys sunsets, long walks on the beach, and deep conversations with unique people.

Ben is a rising sophomore at Harvard College concentrating in Applied Mathematics. He grew up in Medfield, Massachusetts and attended the Roxbury Latin School. Prior to joining the Harvard iGEM team, Ben had worked with a number of different labs ranging from the USDA Sugar Beet and Bean research unit at Michigan State University to the Cardiovascular and Metabolic Disease group at the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research in Cambridge. His primary fields of interest include protein and genome modeling and improving the implementation of programming in biological research. When he is not in the lab, Ben enjoys sailing, football and Super Smash Bros.

Advisors and Mentors

Neel Joshi, Ph.D.

Super Awesome Advisor

Neel is an Associate Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at John A. Paulson Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He has authored 11 publications and holds two patents.He is developing new biomaterials constructed from engineered proteins and peptides. The overarching goal of his research is to extract innovative design principles from materials and systems that are the product of natural evolution and recapitulate them in synthetic systems where their physical properties can be precisely tuned to suit biomedical and biotechnological needs. Current projects employ a range of approaches, including synthetic chemistry, protein engineering, directed evolution, and molecular biology. Working with the Synthetic Biology Platform, Neel has developed a novel protein switch platform that is able to convert the presence of certain biomolecules into a readily detectable signal. This work is being further developed for use in diagnostic applications for the tracking of disease biomarkers in bodily fluids and food samples. Another project associated with the Programmable Nanomaterials Platform is focused on engineering the molecular composition of bacterial biofilms to convert them from pathogenic substances into useful materials with non-natural function, such as filtration devices and catalytic membranes. Neel also has interests in mechanically responsive systems for drug delivery that take advantage of force-induced protein unfolding to release drugs on-demand in living systems.

Marika Ziesack

The Advisor Who is in the Land Above (The 5th floor)

Marika is a Graduate Student in Pamela Silver's laboratory. She works on engineering microbes for renewable production of chemicals. She did her undergrad studies at the University of Heidelberg in Germany in Molecular Biotechnology. In 2008 she participated in the iGEM competition as a member of the Heidelberg team which sparked her interest in synthetic biology. In her graduate studies, Marika develops tools for metabolic engineering of microbes and applies those for the production of commodity chemicals such as fertilizer and fuel.

Matthew Niederhuber

The Advisor with the Graphic Skillz

Matthew studies the cyanobacterial carboxysome, its structure, biogenesis, and potential synthetic applications. He is also involved in the lab’s ongoing work engineering bacteria to perform diagnostic and therapeutic functions in the human gut. He is interested in developing novel biological systems to address environmental and global health issues, and hopes to earn his PhD in Bioengineering.

Chris Wintersinger

The Mentor Who Got Stuck With Us

A bird came down the walk: He did not know I saw; He bit an angle-worm in halves And ate the fellow, raw. And then he drank a dew From a convenient grass, And then hopped sidewise to the wall To let a beetle pass. He glanced with rapid eyes That hurried all abroad,-- They looked like frightened beads, I thought; He stirred his velvet head Like one in danger; cautious, I offered him a crumb, And he unrolled his feathers And rowed him softer home Than oars divide the ocean, Too silver for a seam, Or butterflies, off banks of noon, Leap, plashless, as they swim. -Emily Dickinson

Sir Isaac Plant

The "Boss" Mentor

Isaac is a Ph.D. Candidate in Bioengineering at the John A. Paulson Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He has his Masters of Science in Philosophy and Public Policy for the London School of Economics and Political Science. Isaac’s work focuses on harnessing the unique biology of cyanobacteria to construct new microbial engineering paradigms. He is also interested in the policy and ethics of biological research, and has far more opinions than is generally considered healthy.

@@ Line 171: / Line 171: @@
 <div><div id="wrapRight"><img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/c/c3/Harvard2015Neel.jpg" alt="Neel" height="257" width="258"/><header><h3>Neel Joshi, Ph.D.</h3><h4>Super Awesome Advisor</h4></header></div><p>
+Neel is an Associate Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at John A. Paulson Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He has authored 11 publications and holds two patents.He is developing new biomaterials constructed from engineered proteins and peptides. The overarching goal of his research is to extract innovative design principles from materials and systems that are the product of natural evolution and recapitulate them in synthetic systems where their physical properties can be precisely tuned to suit biomedical and biotechnological needs. Current projects employ a range of approaches, including synthetic chemistry, protein engineering, directed evolution, and molecular biology. Working with the Synthetic Biology Platform, Neel has developed a novel protein switch platform that is able to convert the presence of certain biomolecules into a readily detectable signal. This work is being further developed for use in diagnostic applications for the tracking of disease biomarkers in bodily fluids and food samples. Another project associated with the Programmable Nanomaterials Platform is focused on engineering the molecular composition of bacterial biofilms to convert them from pathogenic substances into useful materials with non-natural function, such as filtration devices and catalytic membranes. Neel also has interests in mechanically responsive systems for drug delivery that take advantage of force-induced protein unfolding to release drugs on-demand in living systems.
-Though all the fates should prove unkind,
-Leave not your native land behind.
-The ship, becalmed, at length stands still;
-The steed must rest beneath the hill;
-But swiftly still our fortunes pace
-To find us out in every place.
-The vessel, though her masts be firm,
-Beneath her copper bears a worm;
-Around the cape, across the line,
-Till fields of ice her course confine;
-It matters not how smooth the breeze,
-How shallow or how deep the seas,
-Whether she bears Manilla twine,
-Or in her hold Madeira wine,
-Or China teas, or Spanish hides,
-In port or quarantine she rides;
-Far from New England's blustering shore,
-New England's worm her hulk shall bore,
-And sink her in the Indian seas,
-Twine, wine, and hides, and China teas.
--Henry David Thoreau
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@@ Line 215: / Line 195: @@
 <div><div id="wrapRight"><img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/7/70/Harvard2015Matt.png" alt="Matt"/><header><h3>Matthew Niederhuber</h3><h4>The Advisor with the Graphic Skillz</h4></header></div><p>
-I shot an arrow into the air,
+Matthew studies the cyanobacterial carboxysome, its structure, biogenesis, and potential synthetic applications. He is also involved in the lab’s ongoing work engineering bacteria to perform diagnostic and therapeutic functions in the human gut. He is interested in developing novel biological systems to address environmental and global health issues, and hopes to earn his PhD in Bioengineering.
-It fell to earth, I knew not where;
-For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
-Could not follow it in its flight.
-I breathed a song into the air,
-It fell to earth, I knew not where;
-For who has sight so keen and strong,
-That it can follow the flight of song?
-Long, long afterward, in an oak
-I found the arrow, still unbroke;
-And the song, from beginning to end,
-I found again in the heart of a friend.
--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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 <div><div id="wrapRight"><img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2015/c/c7/Harvard2015Isaac.png" alt="Isaac"/><header><h3>Sir Isaac Plant</h3><h4>The "Boss" Mentor</h4></header></div><p>
-From childhood's hour I have not been
+Isaac is a Ph.D. Candidate in Bioengineering at the John A. Paulson Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He has his Masters of Science in Philosophy and Public Policy for the London School of Economics and Political Science.
-As others were; I have not seen
+Isaac’s work focuses on harnessing the unique biology of cyanobacteria to construct new microbial engineering paradigms. He is also interested in the policy and ethics of biological research, and has far more opinions than is generally considered healthy.
-As others saw; I could not bring
-My passions from a common spring.
-From the same source I have not taken
-My sorrow; I could not awaken
-My heart to joy at the same tone;
-And all I loved, I loved alone.
-Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
-Of a most stormy life- was drawn
-From every depth of good and ill
-The mystery which binds me still:
-From the torrent, or the fountain,
-From the red cliff of the mountain,
-From the sun that round me rolled
-In its autumn tint of gold,
-From the lightning in the sky
-As it passed me flying by,
-From the thunder and the storm,
-And the cloud that took the form
-(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
-Of a demon in my view.
--Edgar Allen Poe
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