"Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships." - Michael Jordan

The team

We are the SDU-Denmark 2015 iGEM Team! Our team consists of nine members representing four different faculties; the faculty of science, the faculty of health sciences, the faculty of humanities, and the technical faculty. Coming from different backgrounds and with different competencies, we sat out to find a project that could unite our different set of skills and make them work synergistically.

Kathrine Balslev Skovmøller

Since I have some experience in creating magazines and other graphic work my primary job at this team has been to develop our wiki and other PR related tasks. Though I have never tried doing either HTML or CSS before, it has been great fun and of course I have learned a lot of new awesome stuff. In my real life, I study medicine on my 6^th semester. My motivation for participating in this project was to meet new challenges and of course have a fun summer and meet new people! With my experience in medicine I have been working on the medical and therapeutic perspective of our project.

Medicine kskov11@student.sdu.dk

Christian Engelbrecht Mikkelsen

Working with the iGEM team for the last couple of months has been the most fun and difficult times I have had at the university so far. What I have been doing most this summer is helping the others in their doings, in the wet lab, a little dry lab and Wiki. Therefore I have been jumping around between a lot of tasks and “groups”. Also I have been doing optimization for protocols and SOPs, plotting in missing details before uploading them to the wiki.

Biomedicine chrmi13@student.sdu.dk

Thea Bill Andersen

As a student of biomedicine I have a great interest in microbiology and molecular biology in a clinical perspective. My primary efforts have been in the wet lab, but I have also had PR-related tasks. With a great interest in communication of science, I have also become the key presenter of our group. My motivation for applying for iGEM was to get a lot of “hands on”-experience and the chance to immerse myself into the subject. Throughout the project I have been challenged both professionally and personally, but it has been challenges that I wouldn't want to be without.

Biomedicine thean13@student.sdu.dk

Anders Christian Nørgaard

I am currently studying biomedicine on the 5th semester, and when the opportunity to join the iGEM project presented itself, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to find new challenges and gain more experience in the lab. I have mainly been working in the wet-lab, and there I have faced exciting challenges and opportunities that allowed me to put the theoretical knowledge into practice. In addition to the scientific aspect, there is of course the interpersonal relations, which I feel the project encouraged us to expand on.

Biomedicine anha213@student.sdu.dk

Elise Thomsen

I am Ms Wet Lab, here for the fun and experience in the laboratory. That has been my main workload in this project. In the later part, I transferred to the wiki-team, for a better distribution of hands. I have studied Biomedicine for two years, just starting on the third. Our project here in iGEM excites me, because all the knowledge I have achieved through my studies has been put to the test. Even through frustration and long nights, this summer has been one to remember, and if I got the chance, I would gladly do it again!

Biomedicine ethom13@student.sdu.dk

Tim Munk

As a student of philosophy I have taken on the job to illuminate the ethics concerning synthetic biology and the extremely important enlightenment of the broader public. I applied to iGEM because of the challenges along the way, the new acquaintances with equally curious people as myself, and last but not least the professional experience.

Philosophy tisim13@student.sdu.dk

Jens Sivkær Pettersen

My name is Jens and I am studying Biochemistry and Molecular Biology on my 5th semester. Participating in the iGEM competition has been very rewarding on all sorts of levels. Both when it comes to lab experience, but also with regard to how to work on a team project. The dry-lab has been my area of responsibility. I have always liked exploring everything in depth, so keeping track of sequences, designing constructs and having a theoretical overview on the project has come naturally to me. To transfer theory into practice also has my curiosity, so it has been difficult to restrain myself from the wet-lab. For this reason I ended up spending many hours in the wet-lab too.

Biochemistry and Molecularbiology jpett13@student.sdu.dk

Alice Dupont Kragelund

I am studying biomedicine on my 5^th semester and I have primarily been working in the lab. My motivation for participating in iGEM, was to get a lot of experience in the wet lab (which I have gotten) and to get a summer that was not like any other summer. There has been a lot of late nights working in the lab followed by cheap red vine and foosball, which has made this iGEM-summer awesome!

Biomedicine alkra13@student.sdu.dk

Mette-Marie Wendelboe Nielsen

I am studying chemical engineering on the 5th semester. Throughout my education I have sought challenges, and joined iGEM to learn even more. It is my passion to work with novel ideas, that could lead to great innovative initiatives. Though dipping my toes in the pool of wet-lab, my main purpose has been to give this project a twist of real life in the form of a business plan and process design.

Chemical Engineering mettn12@student.sdu.dk

Our supervisors

Mikkel Girke Jørgensen

Mikkel has been one of our two main supervisors on this project. With his great experience on working in the field of microbiology and especially with Escherichia Coli, he has been able to guide us and keep us on track, since he knows a lot about what has been possible. He has been a great support and also been aware of when not to help, letting us try to solve the problems and helped us if we could not figure it out on our own. In this way securing that this is our own project and we have learned a lot from this experience, sometimes the hard way. Always in a cheerful disposition and with a smile on his face he has also been helping us bearing the project in good moods.

Tina Kronborg

Tina has been helping us with everything from using the FACS machine to buying tickets for our trips. She is always ready to help and has also been a personal support, if we ever needed a shoulder to cry on or anything like that. With her structured and organized approach to doing group work and not at least experiences from previous years she has been a great support for this years project!

Our instructors

Thøger Jensen Krogh

Thøger has been a iGEM supervisor for his second year in a row and we can honestly say that he has passed with A plus on the job this year. He has helped us developing our wiki page, since he was on the team in 2013, who created the fundamental code, he has a lot of experience in dos and don'ts when it comes to this field. Besides helping with the wiki he has been very aware of our mood always asking us questions like "are you guys happy?", with a big smile on his face, reminding us to keep our spirits high. Finally he has been helping us in wet lab since his laboratory space is just next to ours. Actually he has just been a real support in every thinkable aspect!

Patrick Rosendahl Andreassen

Patrick has helped our team with a lot of different things, especially in the wet and dry lab, with guidance and pieces of advice on how to clone, transform, how to use parts registry, using SOPs, protocols, ordering primers and almost anything actually. He was also on the 2013 team and instructor in 2014 so he has a lot of experience too. Always in a good mood and open for questions regardless if we have been asking the same questions over and over again. With his work space next to ours like Thøger he has been right around the corner all summer, which has really been an amazing support.