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iGEM Team Heidelberg 2015

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Computer engineer by university training (carried out in the University of Rome “La Sapienza”), Barbara has done her Ph.D. in molecular biology in the laboratory of Luis Serrano, at the EMBL. Her Ph.D. project consisted in constructing a synthetic human p53 network in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. She was post-doc in the laboratory of Victor Sourjik, at the ZMBH. During this time she investigated the self-organizing properties of the Min system, the protein machinery that in Escherichia coli defines mid-cell. Since November 2011, Barbara heads the Synthetic Biology group in the department of Roland Eils, at the BioQuant. Barbara believes in the power of synthetic biology to create new functional devises and to teach important lessons about real biological systems. She also thinks that combining theory and experiments is the best strategy to understand the molecular mechanisms driving biological processes. Barbara finds the iGEM competition truly exciting and she is very happy to mentor the young, motivated and enthusiastic students of the Heidelberg iGEM 2015 team!

Professor Eils is again the captain of the iGEM Heidelberg team. He provides the laboratories and all the required equipment. Besides, he will sponsor the traveling and participation costs. Thank you very much! The research interests of professor Eils lies in the field of the analysis and mathematical modeling of complex pathways in molecular biology. He can look back at a very successful career, as he is the head of the Department of Theoretical Bioinformatics in the DKFZ and working on computational oncology. Furthermore, he is the director of the Department of Bioinformatics and Functional Genomics of the IPMB at the University of Heidelberg. Alongside with professor Kräusslich and professor. Wolfrum, he is one of three founding directors of the BioQuant, as well as the leader of the Systems Biology Center and the representative of the FORSYS-Initiative of Heidelberg’s research network, the ViroQuant. He has won numerous awards; in particular he has been awarded the Biofuture price (approx. 1.2 Million €) by the BMBF for innovations allowing the graphical reconstruction of the eukaryotic mitosis process from 4D microscopy images and in the year 2005 he won the award for new innovative research by Helmholtz Society: “SystemsBiology of Complex Diseases”. Besides, he was one of the main organizers of the International Conference on Systems Biology in Heidelberg 2004 and he organized the German Symposium on Systems Biology 2009. His new engagement in the up-coming field of Synthetic Biology underlines the need for tight interdisciplinary work between experimentalists and theoreticians.

Irina

Katharina did her bachelor’s degree at Leibniz University Hannover and obtained her master’s degree from the University of Heidelberg in Molecular Biotechnology. Now she is working on her Ph.D. in the group of Professor Andres Jäschke at the IPMB of the University of Heidelberg. She is working on the detection of modified RNA. She supported this year’s iGEM Team with her knowledge about the work with RNA in general and supervised the subprojects rape drug detection and the Toolbox establishment. No matter if it rained or the sun was shining, she always (and when I say always I mean it!) wore a dress.

Lukas learned the profession of a biology laboratory assistant at the DKFZ in Heidelberg. He worked in groups focusing on the fields of Immunology and Genomics. Afterwards he started to study Molecular Biotechnology at the University of Heidelberg to expand his knowledge. With his practical experience he could help the team solving problems that occurred during experiments. His huge expertise in cell culture was of great value for the team. During the iGEM competition he always had good ideas how to get constructs cloned that simply didn’t want to be cloned. He always had a special eye on the cell culture and supervised all the assays performed in mammalians. Besides help a all issues concerning the mammalian cells and mammalian vectors.

Philipp

Stefan K

Ilia, who was a member of Heidelberg's 2013 iGEM team, obtained his Master's degree in Systems Biology from the University of Heidelberg and is currently pursuing his PhD, focusing on protein degradation in yeast. His knowledge about iGEM and being a yeast guru was very valuable for the whole team. He dropped by daily to see what the current issues were and to discuss how to solve them. Before he leaves you can be sure to hear Ilia say, “Well then good luck!”. He wins the prize for the fastest reply on emails!