Meet the Carnegie Mellon iGEM Team

The Carnegie Mellon iGEM team is composed of nine students who are diverse in terms of age, majors, and interests. We have many wonderful advisors who are experts in different fields of biology. Scroll down to read more about our team!

Student Researchers

Niteesh Sundaram

Dominique Maccalla

Dominique is from New Haven, Connecticut and is a rising senior studying biomedical engineering and material science engineering. After graduation, she wants to work as a cosmetic chemist developing hair and skin products. Her interests include beauty, dance, and issues of social justice. In her free time, she loves to attend church, watch YouTube videos, and going for runs. She would spend the last $20 to her name getting her nails done, has been a competitive gymnast for most of her life, and is also deathly afraid of bees.

Michelle Yu

Donna Lee

Wei Mon Lu

Wei is a Pittsburgh native studying Chemical Engineering with a double major in Biomedical Engineering. She aspires to either work in pharmaceuticals or consumable consumer goods (read: food). She is the vice president of the Society of Women Engineers, member of the Joint Funding Committee, a projectionist for AB Films, and is in her second year of being a Residential Advisor. She is a master cake decorator, hates running but still signs up for the Pittsburgh Marathon every year, and enjoys discussing and trying to remedy social inequality, race, poverty, and affordable access to quality education. She would rather spend her money on concert tickets than food, but still believes that she can definitively out-eat anyone in any kind of vegetarian-friendly eating competition. Wei is so uncoordinated that she almost fell down a waterfall once.

William Casazza

Will is a rising junior from Barrington, Rhode Island, and is majoring in computational biology. His ultimate goal after graduation is to work in industry either developing diagnostic models/tools or working with synthetic biology and genetic engineering. Will’s interests include genetic engineering, parallel algorithms, epigenetic regulation, and probably some sort of math. In his free time, he likes to go long distance racing and long distance running, playing the upright bass, and listening to jazz. And, you know, just hanging out. He plays an impressive range of instruments including guitar, upright and electric bass, trombone, piano, ukulele, and melodica. He’s involved with the jazz scene at CMU and around Pittsburgh once playing in a large ensemble and occasionally gigs in small combos. He is secretly very interested in ethics and social issues.

Jordan Tick

Jordan is from Buffalo, New York and studies Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering (and may pick up a minor, time permitting). After graduation, he wants to pursue a Masters in one of his majors before involving himself in augmented reality or signals processing. Academically, his interests are signal processing and graphics. Outside of the classroom, he enjoys listening to music, watching movies, playing video games, and is in Carnegie Mellon’s Archery, Parkour, and Taekwondo clubs. He’s studied French, Spanish, and Chinese and knows how to play the ukulele, piano, guitar, and trumpet. Previous research experience includes studying evolution by looking at the structural proteins of ribosomes. He graduated a year early from high school. Jordan is the proud owner of three dogs and may or may not have killed a man. The jury’s still out on that one.

Max Telmer

Max grew up in Pittsburgh and now studies Material Science and Engineering. After graduation he wants to go into the world of manufacturing. His favourite sports team is FC Barcelona and he enjoys watching It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. In his free time, he enjoys sports, movies, and camping. His family is from Canada, he’s twenty years old, and he used to be a swimmer.

Kenneth Li

Advisors

Taylor Canady

Taylor hails from the New Mexico/California area. He studied Biochemistry at the University of New Mexico and did research in Bioengineering. Right now, his work is figuring out how to make E. coli do all the work. He enjoys action movies, programming, soccer, biking up hills, running down hills, and snow things. He knows ASL, gets sea sick, only reads non-fiction, and believes that his time is money.