Team:British Columbia/Team

From 2009.igem.org

Contents

Where we're from

We're from the University of British Columbia, located in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. In February 2010, Vancouver is the host city for the 2010 Winter Olympics, which promises to be an exciting time for all UBC iGEM team members.


Who we are

Advisors:

Undergrads:

What we did

Advisors:

  • Eric Lagally was the prime mover for the British Columbia iGEM team. He started the team in October 2008 and was responsible for organizing the team, seeking internal UBC funding and extramural funding, and handling logistics like space and resources. He was assisted in these efforts by other advisors and all team members.
  • Joanne Fox helped write funding requests for internal funding, provided guidance on research direction, and helped set up the computing resources we used in our experiments. She was also the main contact point between the team and the Advanced Molecular Biology Lab, the teaching lab where a large part of the experiments were performed.
  • David Ng also co-wrote funding requests, and worked with Joanne and Eric to let us use all of the resources of the AMBL lab during the summer.
  • Paul Jaschke has been vital to troubleshooting our experiments, being careful not to dictate the direction the experiments should take. He's also been our administrator, purchasing reagents and supplies, booking rooms, and researching flights.


Students:

  • Alex Ng was the RNA man in designing parts for the lock/key and jammer subprojects. He spent time working with FACS and RNAFold, and helped Amelia with assemblies.
  • Amelia Hardjasa assembled the night away for most of the summer, focusing on the lock/key subproject as well as general use assemblies, and then moved on to pBAD promoter characterization in fall. She was also in charge of all parts submissions to the registry.
  • Calvin Chan was the graphic artist for the team, designing our logo, our shirts, and web templates. He was also a member of the research team, helping with with various time course measurements on each of the subprojects.
  • Charles Howes generated a FASTA file containing all biobricks, wrote a program that emulates the biobrick protocol to generate a FASTA file, and wrote a program to draw biobrick diagrams from component pieces. He also helped Eric Ma design a LIMS for the team, which should be finished sometime in the new year. Charles was also in charge of the Wiki pages.
  • Eric Ma was the jack of many trades (note, not all, just many). He proposed the idea of doing a biosensor project, and helped to organize team and journal club meetings. He also helped with experiments, assemblies and other miscellaneous lab stuff. He was the Funding sub-team leader, helping to raise funds from a variety of sponsors. He also did a public speech on synthetic biology, helping to spread the word of iGEM to a large cross-section of the UBC student population.
  • Hank Yu was open to help out on the different side projects, from 20 hour competent cell making to basic assemblies to early-morning FACS to basic preparation work. He is also keen on spreading the word about iGEM across campus!
  • Heather Kempthorne was a full-time iGEM team member during the summer months. Heather worked hard to design, mutagenize, assemble and test the various pBAD promoters.
  • Janny Ke helped with experiment design, sponsorship, and lab work.
  • Karen Cheshire helped with experiments as a member of the research team.
  • Mark Ling helped with experiments as a member of the research team.