Team:Utah State/Team

Who we are

FACULTY ADVISORS: Scott Hinton: Dean of the College of Engineering, USU Dr. Charles Miller: Department of Biological and Irrigation Engineering, USU Dr. Ronald C. Sims: Department of Biological and Irrigation Engineering, USU GRADUATE STUDENTS: Brad Henrie: Department of Biological and Irrigation Engineering, USU Elisabeth Linton: Department of Biological and Irrigation Engineering, USU Trent Mortensen: Department of Biological and Irrigation Engineering, USU UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS: Amanda Feldt: Department of Biological and Irrigation Engineering, USU Alex Hatch: Department of Biological and Irrigation Engineering, USU Rachel Nicole Porter Jackson: Department of Biological and Irrigation Engineering, USU Cole Peterson: Department of Biological and Irrigation Engineering, USU HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS: Sean Bedingfield: Sky View High School Garrett Hinton: Sky View High School Jody Jerez: InTech Collegiate High School Jeff Karren: InTech Collegiate High School Hyun-jin Kim: InTech Collegiate High School Tyrel Rupp: Sky View High School

Dean Scott Hinton Dr. Ron Sims Charles Miller Brad Henrie Elisabeth Linton Trent Mortensen Rachel Nicole Porter Jackson Alex Hatch Cole Peterson Sean Bedingfield Jody Jerez Jeff Karren Hyun-jin Kim Tyrel Rupp Garrett Hinton

More About Us

• Trent Mortensen is a master's student in Biological Engineering. His main research direction is biomedical in nature, studying the antimycobacterial properties of the St. John's Wort herb. He was on the 2008 Utah State iGEM team and is working as a graduate advisor for the 2009 team.

• Elisabeth Linton is a Biological Engineering student. Her research is focused on polyhydroxyalkanoates. For the iGEM team, Libbie helped in project determination and planning, as well as literature review and topic research. She also carried out work in the laboratory like restriction enzyme digestions, gel electrophoresis, DNA isolation, and bacterial transformations. She was also responsible for coordinating efforts and organizing the wiki.

• Rachel Nicole Porter Jackson is in her third year at Utah State University majoring in Biological Engineering. For the iGEM project, she helped to carry out some of the lab work, work on the logo, and contribute to the wiki. In the lab, she helped isolate and purify DNA, prepare and run electrophoresis gels, and culture cells.

• Matthew Sims is a Senior attending Logan High School. This is his first year participating in laboratory research at Utah State University. He plans to go to college next fall and continue his studies in molecular biology and biochemistry. He helped during the summer months to carry out many experiments and obtain and analyze data.

• Garrett Hinton is a senior at Sky View High School in Smithfield, Utah. He was heavily involved in the project discussion meetings, as well as the background literature research. Garrett spent many hours working on this project and carried out a substantial portion of the laboratory work.

• Sean Bedingfield is a freshman at Utah State University majoring in Biological Engineering/pre-med. He has been involved with some lab work and research into the systems of various bacteria for the project.

• Hyun-jin Kim is a freshmen at InTech Collegiate High School. He is from Gwangju, South Korea. He has followed his father, who is a visiting professor, to Logan, Utah and got interested at the iGEM project and joined the team. He is now learning many skills in the laboratory by his helpers.

• Jeff Karren is a senior at InTech Collegiate High School, and hails from Logan, Utah. As one of several InTech students selected to participate in internships with USU's biological engineering department, he had the opportunity to join the iGEM team at USU. He has specialized mostly in helping with the wiki, but has assisted in some lab work, including using CTAB to isolate DNA plasmids.

• Tyrel Rupp is a senior at Sky View High School in Smithfield, Utah. This is his first year involved in iGEM. As well as being an excellent pipetter, he is skilled in many of the laboratory arts such as electrophoresis and DNA transformation.

• Alex Hatch is a junior at Utah State University with a major in Biological Engineering and a pre-med emphasis. He's a Utah native. Currently he's working on research dealing with microbial diversity in bioremediation, with a developing interest in synthetic biology.

Logan and USU

Utah State University is located in Logan, Utah. Logan is about 80 miles north of Salt Lake City, Utah. The city of Logan is located in the heart of Cache Valley near the western slopes of the Bear River Mountains, the northernmost branch of the Wasatch Range. The city has a population of approximately 47,000. Logan was established in 1859 and has a rich heritage and wonderful culture. The city of Logan has been stated to be among the safest cities in America.

Utah State University was established in 1888 as the Agricultural College of Utah. Its name was later changed to Utah State Agricultural College and finally became Utah State University (USU) in 1957. As the land-grant university in Utah, USU conducts world-class research in a variety of agricultural and natural resource disciplines, and has several projects in conjunction with the Department of Defense and NASA. Utah State University also conducts extensive aerospace research. The main campus is located in Logan, Utah. Beyond the Logan campus, Utah State's Extension programs extend academic resources and support throughout the entire state of Utah, having extension locations in each of Utah's 29 counties.

The Sant Building is home to the new USU synthetic biology laboratory