Team:Yale/team
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Team
Meet the faces behind Yale iGEM 2015.
Click each name to view my bio!
Wet Lab
Colin Hemez
colin.hemez@yale.edu
Colin is a member of the class of 2018 majoring in biomedical engineering and art history. His hometown is Los Alamos, NM. On the team, Colin focuses primarily on gene knockouts and cyanobacteria culturing methods. He is interested in the development of novel therapeutic proteins. When not in lab, Colin loves going for runs, visiting museums, and sending routes at the climbing gym.
Danny Keller
daniel.keller@yale.edu
Danny is a Computer Science major in the class of 2018. His hometown is Rye, NY. On the team, he primarily works with cyanobacteria, software development, and literature searches. He has no clue what he wants to do with his life, but enjoys synthetic biology research.He once sang lead vocals in a progressive metal band.
Lionel Jin
chentian.jin@yale.edu
Lionel is a sophomore looking to major in Molecular Biology and Computer Science. He grew up in Singapore, where he served as an infantry officer before starting college. Lionel hopes to combine his interest in science and in entrepreneurship, and he has had "great fun" working with friends on the wet lab team to engineer rhizobium.
Dan Shapiro
daniel.m.shapiro@yale.edu
Hailing from Northbrook, Illinois, hometown of notorious rapper Chief Keef, Daniel is a sophomore majoring in Physics. He has always been interested in biology—his favorite childhood present was the complete videography of naturalist Sir David Attenborough. He believes GMOs will save the world, and is particularly excited about this project because he thinks Cyanobacteria are key to powering the future.
Jessica Tantivit
jessica.tantivit@yale.edu
Jessica is a rising sophomore from the lovely town of Weston, FL. She hopes to major in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology in order to become a doctor or a global health professional. Or both, because why not. Her favorite restriction enzyme is BamHI because it reminds her of the Bahn mi Vietnamese sandwich.
Erin Wang
erin.wang@yale.edu
Erin is a sophomore from Rochester, New York majoring in Anthropology. She spends her time in the lab working on exonuclease and ligation-free cloning (ELIC) and playing "Toxic" for her bacteria. After college, she hopes to go to medical school and find a career that combines public health and mindfulness. You can usually find her in the kitchen or in the WYBC broadcast studio.
Holly Zhou
holly.zhou@yale.edu
Originally from Southern California, Holly is a sophomore in Silliman College who plans on majoring in Biomedical Engineering. She focuses on engineering Rhizobia. Holly hopes to do volunteer work abroad in public health and contribute to the improvement of organ transplant systems. While on the East Coast, she enjoys googling images of In-N-Out burger when she is hungry.
Modeling
Joe Lanzone
joseph.lanzone@yale.edu
This is a default bio. You probably want to replace this as quickly as possible. You can have about 70 words. It's a lot more generous than a twitter bio. If you don't want to write about yourself you can put a small poem instead.
Andrew Saydjari
andrew.saydjari@yale.edu
Andrew is a sophomore from Wisconsin, majoring in Chemistry. He has a keen interest in biochemical modeling, and is also keen on posting chemistry jokes on Facebook. He's a peer tutor for Yale's Organic chemistry classes and his favorite quote is "Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less" by Marie Curie
Board
Alex Buhimschi
alex.buhimschi@yale.edu
This is a default bio. You probably want to replace this as quickly as possible. You can have about 70 words. It's a lot more generous than a twitter bio. If you don't want to write about yourself you can put a small poem instead.
Ariel Hernandez-Leyva
ariel.hernandez-leyva@yale.edu
Ariel is a senior majoring in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology. He was born in raised in the Chicago. Currently, he serves as the research coordinator and undergraduate advisor for iGEM. He hopes to have a future as physician scientist, studying the human gut microbiota and treating patients' bacteria to treat their bodies. He is a semi-professional juggler and is often seen juggling fruit in grocery stores.
Edward Kong
edward.kong@yale.edu
This is a default bio. You probably want to replace this as quickly as possible. You can have about 70 words. It's a lot more generous than a twitter bio. If you don't want to write about yourself you can put a small poem instead.
Stephanie Mao
stephanie.mao@yale.edu
Stephanie is a junior majoring in Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, and was a former Philosophy major. When not in lab pipetting like a pipeline, they are involved in many feminist and queer organizations on campus. They enjoy making origami dinosaurs and writing science fiction novellas. Their feminist writing can be found at Broad Recognition, Yale's feminist online magazine.
Graduate Mentors
Natalie Ma
natalie.ma@yale.edu
Natalie is a 5th year doctoral student in the Isaacs Lab and currently the lead graduate mentor for the iGEM team. Outside iGEM, her research explores emergent properties of organisms with altered genetic codes. In her spare time, Natalie can be found cooking or baking (with a particular emphasis on replicating or modifying recipes from www.smittenkitchen.com and www.seriouseats.com), or foraging for wild food and mushrooms.
Jaymin Patel
jaymin.patel@yale.edu
A member of the Isaacs and Crawford Labs, Jaymin is interested in poop.
Corey Perez
corey.perez@yale.edu
This is a default bio. You probably want to replace this as quickly as possible. You can have about 70 words. It's a lot more generous than a twitter bio. If you don't want to write about yourself you can put a small poem instead.
Faculty Advisors
Steve Dellaporta
stephen.dellaporta@yale.edu
This is a default bio. You probably want to replace this as quickly as possible. You can have about 70 words. It's a lot more generous than a twitter bio. If you don't want to write about yourself you can put a small poem instead.
Farren Isaacs
farren.isaacs@yale.edu
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Acknowledgments
Project Support and Advice
All iGEM team members, as well as advisors Natalie Ma, Dr.Farren Isaacs, and Dr. Stephen Dellaporta, participated in the formation of the idea for this project and the research required to design and carry out this work
Project Advisor Support
Dr. Farren Isaacs and Dr. Stephen Dellaporta were the official advisors for our project--they helped us troubleshoot our setbacks and guided fundraising efforts.
Lab Support
Ben Akhuetie-Oni, Edward Barbieri, Ryan Gallagher, Adrian Haimovich, Paul Muir, Jaymin Patel, Corey Perez (Yale Crawford Lab), and Ariel Hernandez.Leyva helped with running lab experiments as well as lending resources. Natalie Ma, in addition to aiding with experiments, was also instrumental in keeping the team on track by helping us set daily and weekly goals.
Cyanobacteria Support
The Jordan Peccia Lab at Yale University provided us with the UTEX 2973 cyanobacteria strain and gave us advice on growing and culturing cyanobacteria.
Rhizobia Support
The Handelsman Lab and the Jacobs-Wagner Lab at Yale University provided us with the Rhizobium tropici strain CIAT 899 and Sinorhizobium meliloti 1021 strains 356, 370, and 371, respectively.
Web Design & Development
Colin Hemez and Cameron Yick designed the website, and Cameron implemented the designs. Colin also designed the team "Tree" logo.
Administration
Amy Mulholland and Natalie Ma helped us arrange meetings with our PIs as well as order lab equipment and experiment materials.