Our Team

Sierra Tackett

I am a senior Biochemistry major with the hopes of going to medical school. I coordinated all of the projects that our team accomplished apart from lab. This included coordinating the summer camp, policy & practices work, and performing background research. Over my three years in iGEM, I have developed a passion for coordinating the Bioengineering Summer Camp, and I will miss doing this greatly. I was responsible for organizing the outside of lab curriculum and activities, as well as making sure the marketing was accomplished and that everybody had food to eat! I also mapped out the wiki page, organized content, and delegated who was responsible for what. I further ensured that leadership would transition well by creating an instruction manual with all of the details pertinent to running an iGEM team at WLC. It’s so hard to pick my favorite iGEM moment! This is my third year on the team, and presenting in Boston would have to be my favorite “moment”. I loved the city, being around my team members, and speaking with all of the iGEM teams across the world!
Aside from iGEM, I work as a medical scribe and love learning in the fast paced environment of the emergency departments that I work in. I have interned at the Medical Examiner's Office, and hope to become a pathologist some day. My favorite money drain is my growing collection of stationary and office supplies and spend more time than I should "jammin on my planner".

Matthew Mortensen

I am currently a senior Biochemistry major attending WLC. My primary role on this year’s team was acting as the lab manager. This involved deciding which experiments needed to be performed, delegating the lab workload, designing primers, troubleshooting problems, and most often just performing the protocols that needed to be done all while training the next generation of WLC iGEMers in lab. Outside of the lab, my main contribution to the team was the design and implementation of our wiki page (shout out w3cschools). I was the programmer behind our modeling program. I also rewrote the lab curriculum in our summer-camp binder. My favorite responsibility was being the primary lab instructors for our synthetic biology summer camp for high-school students. As a lab instructor I did prep work for labs, went through (sometimes) short lectures on the theoretical basis of the experiments we were performing, and finally guided the group through the planned procedures. All of our procedures worked this year which was excellent, and during the down-time between steps we were able to review and reinforce the concepts learned that day in the lecture portions.
Outside of the lab, when I have time, I enjoy exploring new types of music, comic books, the occasional video game, long walks to just organize my thoughts, NPR, and Netflix. In the future I hope to pursue a career in research by attending graduate school, although I am not truly sure of what I want to focus on just yet.

Jordyn Pieper

I am currently a junior biology student at WLC and this year on iGEM I have been in charge of the completion of the surveys by the WELS high school science teachers. My biggest time contributions have gone toward the policy and practices section of the project. I have organized meetings and have done what I could to make things as easy as possible. I have also helped in the editing of the articles that we have put onto our website. My favorite iGEM moment would be the first time I met the other members of the team. The first impression that they gave me assured me that I would be working with a group of determined people who planned on having fun in the process.

Harrison Fleming

I am a sophomore intending to major in Biology with a Chemistry minor. Much of the work I did for iGEM was in the lab which consisted of projects such as phage isolation and cloning. I also assisted this year’s iGEM team with the survey as well as writing an article on Klebsiella and Yersinia Pestis. My favorite moment from iGEM thus far was successfully moving the Klebsiella TolC to the PSB1C3 Plasmid.

Christa Winslow

Ryan George

Lakaysha Blacksher

Lakaysha Blacksher is the Research Assistant to the Professor of Anthropology (Dr. Ned Farley) at WLC. She graduated from Saint Francis High School in 2012, and is currently a junior studying Biological Anthropology with an intended minor in Spanish. Her involvement with this year's project is based in Human Practices; exploring the cultural boundaries and effects of introducing biotechnology to developing countries. Her hobbies include billiards, music, reading, and crying before exams. She hopes to use her degree to become a Forensic Investigator or professor of Anthropology. She intends to stay on with WLC's iGEM team until graduation, and also plans to publish several articles, including a study on Roman-era metallurgy.

Jacob Jodat

I am a junior biochemistry major with aspirations to attend medical school following my undergraduate education. This is my second year on the iGEM team. My role on the team was to assist with lab work, research diseases that are relevant to our project, and help out at our synthetic biology summer camp. My favorite part about iGEM is getting experience in the lab. I enjoy being able to see the whole process of a research project rather than doing several unrelated labs one time in a class.

Anna Garvey

Zach Birner

My name is Zach Birner.

Hannah Rodrigues

John Bechtel

I am a freshman Biochemistry and Marine Biology major that started iGEM after attending the team’s summer camp! I partook in poster design, survey assistance, and Policy & Practices coffee cup lid design. My favorite iGEM experience thus far has been the summer camp’s trip to MSOE.

Advisors

Dr. John Werner

Dr. James Henkel