Difference between revisions of "Team:UC Davis/Attributions"

Hi! My name is Joanne Wu and I am a rising senior pursuing a degree in Mechanical Engineering. I joined iGEM because I think there is a lot to learn from nature in designing more adaptive, resilient, and efficient systems.

This summer I led our team’s efforts in exploring our problem space and iteratively refining our project goals. My interest in STEM education and engagement inspired me to incorporate a lesson plan into our overall approach. For this endeavor, I worked closely with Gabe to first understand the biology behind our biosensor and then with various educators to figure out the most effective way to present this information. My interest in civic engagement prompted me to work closely with Muntaha to refine our Antimicrobial Footprint app. I also created and delivered our presentation at the iGEM symposium with Gabe and put together this wiki.

Hi! My name is Muntaha Samad and I am a third year at UC Davis studying Computer Science and Engineering. I am very interested in mobile deep linking, and the idea of making the app world fluid like the web. I also really enjoy robotics and am interested in pursuing a career working with smart prosthetics. In my free time I enjoy playing ultimate frisbee and working for the UC Davis C-STEM Center. I decided to join iGEM to gain more experience programming in the context of solving biological problems.

This summer I produced an app that calculates your antimicrobial footprint and raises awareness about the unnecessary and potentially harmful ubiquity of antimicrobials in our environment.

Hello, I am Logan Vinson a fourth year Genetics and Genomics major at UC Davis. My career interests include genetic monitoring and breeding selection for endangered species and populations under inbred depression and genetic bottleneck. In my spare time I enjoy rock climbing and engineering. I first found out about iGEM while i was at my junior college by my biology professor. She told me about the competition after i had expressed interest in genetic manipulation and synthetic biology. Ever since then i had made it my personal and professional goal to compete in iGEM.

This summer I worked on genetic assembly and integration, expression and protein purification. I also helped with outreach and data collection.

Hi, my name is Andrew. I’m currently pursuing a degree in Computer Science with a minor in Biochemistry. I enjoy working on problems that integrate computer science and biology, both hardware and software. My professional interests include automation and scientific instrumentation. In my free time I enjoy working on cars and welding. I joined iGEM for the experience of using biology to solve a real world problem.

This summer I worked on several methods of quantifying the signal produced by our biosensor. I also contributed to the outreach of the project and sample collection.

Hi. I am Andrew Michelmore, a second year Electrical Engineer at Santa Clara University. I am very interested in the engineering and design of power grids, as well as in transistor organization for processors and microprocessors. I hope to pursue a career in one of these areas. I decided to join iGEM, because I was interested in the engineering approach and view iGEM has towards biology.

I contributed to the project mostly through outreach and wastewater collection. I also assisted with hardware and hardware testing.

My scientific efforts are focused on combining computational and experimental tools to develop a fundamental knowledge of enzyme catalysis, and applying those principles to design novel proteins of therapeutic or commercial interest. Currently I am working with an international community on the development of Rosetta computational methodology for predicting and designing macromolecular structures, interactions, and functions. Using this methodology I have completed the de novo design of enzymes capable of catalyzing chemical reactions not found in nature, such as the Diels-Alder reaction. This was followed up by working with an online community, Foldit, to further engineer these proteins for enhanced activity. Most recently I have worked on the redesign of naturally occurring enzymes for the degradation of immunogenic gluten proteins, to develop a novel CO2 fixation pathways, and design of a novel anthrax therapeutic. My current focus is on the design of novel biofuel and commodity chemical biosynthetic pathways, the development of novel therapeutics, and the general understanding of the relationship between protein sequence, structure, and function.

My lab’s interests span a variety of topics related to evolutionary, synthetic and systems biology. We employ machine learning, graph theory, mathematical optimization, multiscale modeling and HPC simulation methods to address questions in these fields. Computational predictions are experimentally tested in our microbiology lab, where we perform laboratory evolution of microbial cultures, and we construct novel synthetic gene circuits for biotechnological applications.

I are interested in using the tools of Systems Biology to elucidate rules of biological assembly for gene regulatory networks and in turn use this knowledge, through Synthetic Biology approaches, to build novel circuits.

I have been an advisor to UC Davis iGEM teams for the past 5 years and have enjoyed every minute of it. I am currently manager of the UC Davis Biomedical Engineering Molecular Prototyping and BioInnovation Lab. We provide a dedicated space for students interested in synthetic biology to pursue and implement projects within the synthetic biology realm. My primary interest is to improve mentorship and educational opportunities for students interested in applications of systems and synthetic biology.

I'm a microbiology doctoral student in [Jonathan Eisen's lab](https://twitter.com/phylogenomics/). I am interested in studying large-scale migration patterns of microbes. Currently, I am using cichlid fish as a model system for investigating how host-microbe associations have evolved over deep time. Advocate of Free Software, Open Hardware, Open Access scientific publishing and reproducible research.