Team

Arjun Athreya

Arjun is a fourth-year majoring in Psychology and minoring in Chemistry. He currently serves as the leader of Team Virginia and will be attending the iGEM conference for the second time. The only non-engineer on the team, he plays a vital role in broadening the perspectives of the project goals and applications. After graduation, he hopes to pursue a career in medical research, integrating principles of synthetic biology with various medical applications.

Josh Fass

Josh is a second-year at the University of Virginia studying Biomedical Engineering. This is his first year competing in iGEM. Josh contested assumptions, processed and finalized sequence designs, assembled the wiki, researched human practices, documented diligently, and performed copious wet lab work. Outside of school, he enjoys reading, biking, politics, and making a difference. He hopes to pursue a career in biomedical research.

Jackie Niu

Jackie is a fourth-year Biomedical Engineering student at the University of Virginia. She is currently applying to graduate school for Biomedical Engineering. She finds the possibilities and challenges that research poses very intriguing, and is considering a career in academia.

Her role on the team is making detailed sequencing and circuit designs, making cell culturing mediums and solutions, performing general lab procedures (e.g., gel electrophoresis, PCA, DNA transformation, inoculation, cleaning), managing the timeline, and going to lab late at night to finish experiments other members start in the day. Besides participating in VGEM, she also engage in many other activities including an Arteriogenesis lab, SASE (Society of Asian Scientists and Engineers, puzzles, hiking, cooking, and baking.

Yong Wu

Yong is a fourth-year Chemical Engineering student at the University of Virginia. She was a member of the Virginia United team last year, and this is her second year on the VGEM team, continuing the work in computer modeling and simulation on biological processes. Before the summer research took off, she introduced basic microbiology laboratory skills to new team members. She spent her summer at Newark, DE, working as a formulation intern for DuPont's Crop Protection business. Her research interests include polymer chemistry, rheology, bio fuel, and synthetic biology.

Yanzhi Yang

Yanzhi is a second-year Chemical Engineering student double-majoring in Economics at the University of Virginia. He brought significant lab expertise to the group and also provided valuable fashion commentary. Outside of class, he volunteers as an Emergency Medical Technician and plays rugby. He is an integral part of the team, contributing through lab work such as bacteria and yeast culturing and gel electrophoresis etc. His research interests include petroleum technology, pharmaceutical drug design and synthetic biology. Upon graduation, he plans to pursue a degree in medicine.

Advisors

Professor Keith Kozminski

Department of Biology

Professor Inchan Kwon

Department of Chemical Engineering

Professor Jason Papin

Department of Biomedical Engineering

Research Format

Our research for iGEM included both a spring semester seminar and summer lab work. The spring semester portion of our research consisted of a small student-led seminar and laboratory boot-camp. The seminar experience was led by members of last year’s UVA iGEM team. We met twice weekly to discuss and analyze timely research from extensive readings drawn from scientific journals on topics germane to our changing synthetic biology focus areas. During the final few weeks of the seminar, we developed several proposals for our summer project which we presented to our advisers. In addition, two hours per week were dedicated to intensive hands-on lab instruction regarding lab safety, protocols, modeling, and methodology. Aside from background research, all work for the project was done during the summer and a few weeks spilling into the fall 2011 semester.