The Team

We are descendants from a place that emerged from a very slow geological process from millions of years ago. Results that still impact the world. This place is called PANAMA. A place where history can be divided into many chapters. Beginning with the linking of North and South America, enabling the exchange of species from both locations, making evolution possible to make use of this place as a huge laboratory. Years later in our history this became one of the scenarios for pirates looking for gold in the new world. This earth that links the world, owns one of the greatest engineering milestones, The Panama Canal, and now the expansion of it is without precedent. We as young scientist are part of the enterprise involving genetic engineering through the iGEM competition. Now Panama has two great engineering projects, one is the expansion of the Panama canal as a macro engineering project and our project as micro and nano scale engineering. This makes us pioneers in this field in our country.

This year our team is composed by students from the [http://www.up.ac.pa/PortalUp/index.aspx University of Panama], [http://www.ulat.ac.pa/es/index.php Latina University of Panama] and one student from [http://www.utp.ac.pa Technological University of Panama]. All of us studying different careers such as Biology, Biotechnology, Chemistry and Engineering.

We were advised by several Academics representants. They all did an amazing job of providing us a positive feedback. That´s why we are very grateful with all of them.

Advisors

Carmenza Spadafora, Ph.D

Carmenza

I obtained my doctoral degree in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry in Spain. After living in beautiful Andalucía I moved to Florida for my first postdoc position and then moved on to the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in the Washington, DC area for a much longer second postdoctoral position. I moved back to my country two years ago and when SENACYT asked for my institution, INDICASAT, to help the team, I was asked if I could take charge of the team work in our lab. It has been great to see the independent thinking, great enthusiasm, and pride the students have shown facing the fact that they will be making it possible for our country, Panama, to be in the iGEM contest for the first time in our incipient scientific history

Patrick Nee, MS, Mechanical Engineering

Patrick

My education was in mechanical engineering (course 2) at MIT. I then lived in Tokyo for three years, getting a Masters degree in mechanical engineering from the Tokyo Institute of Technology. I spent my career in software development in quantitative finance and consumer web sites. I have lived in Panama two years, working and also giving support to iGEMPanama

Oris Sanjur, Ph.D

Oris

I obtained a doctoral degree in Cell and Developmental Biology from Rutgers University, New Jersey. After I got my degree, I returned to my home country Panama, for a two-year postdoct at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), using molecular tools to infer relationship among domesticated and wild squashes. In 2000, I accepted a position at STRI as Manager of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology and Evolution. Recently, I was appointed Associate Director for Science Administration at STRI. I got involved with iGEM when I was invited by SENACYT to participate as one of the instructors for the Panama team. It has been a wonderful experience to have the opportunity to collaborate and share ideas with a group of very bright and enthusiastic Panamanian students that have embrace the challenge of representing Panama in the iGEM contest.

Students

Natasha Gómez

Natx

Complete name: Natasha Natalia Gómez Pérez

Age: 19 years

Career: Biology degree.

Specialization area: Zoology

Institution: University of Panama.

e-mail: nanagope@gmail.com

Hobbies: read books, papers, write about general things that happened in life and that pass through my mind, play guitar, sing, play tennis, spend time with my family and messing around with friends and finally, one of the most important things for me, be absorbed in my own thoughts.

iGEM expectations: This is a great step for doing something for the humanity. The entire world could change for good thanks to the synthetic biology. The power is in our hands, let`s do better things for the future. Research interests: I am extremely interested in conducting research in order to contribute to the knowledge and development of humanity in the scientific field. Since I was a child, my passion has been to study animal behavior. However, since I joined to study biology, the ecology and the environmental biology has been very important to me primarily because we are living a crucial moment for the world as global warming. Now I see more clearly that the synthetic biology is a good new increasing field to combat this and one good example is what we are doing in our proyect of rhamnolipids. I have many questions, there are now many aspects of biology that I like to investigate. I am looking for many answers. To go deeper and deeper into the wonderful world of the study of life, I reaffirm the maxim of Socrates, "I only know that I know nothing", and that gives me more thirsty of wanting to know.

Ezequiel Aguilar

Ezequiel

Name: Ezequiel Aguilar

Age: 25

Degree: Computer Science

Institution: Technological University of Panama

Hobbies: I love reading books on any subject, including my favorite authors are Stephen Hawking, Dan Brown, Sthephenie Meyer and Robert Kiyosaki. I hear all kinds of music, salsa, merengue and tropical rhythms. My passion is computer programming, I love it. Research Interests High Performance computing

Jeffrey Perez

Jeffrey

Career: Biology

Ernesto Gómez

Ernesto

Name: Ernesto Bolivar Gómez Pérez

Age: 24

Degree: Microbiology Undergraduate student

Institution: Universidad de Panama, Smithsonian Tropical Reasearch Institute intern

e-mail: ernestopro@hotmail.com

Hobbies: Think, learn about life, fungus growing ants biology, read about phylosophy, history, science and sci-fi, listen music (playing guitar, drums, sing, specially rock music), write, I like to hear and talk with my parents and old people, I love to work in the lab and outdoor lab, sleep is the greatest pleasure, persue of happiness.

The iGEM Experience: One of the best scientific experience that I have had. I feel that I am part of something huge in terms of scientific development. I am learning a lot from the instructors, advisors and my colleagues in the lab respect to biotechnology. As a biology student am trying to understand life through evolution and how life works in his multiple forms. With the iGEM experience I am starting to see life with another perspective under the umbrella of synthetic biology, that is trying to figure it out how to desing and modify biological systems into a standard way. Richard Feynman said ‘What I cannot create, I do not understand.’ this became one of the slogans of us, as biological engineering. Now I have a better way to understand life with the synergy between Biology and engineered. The iGEM program made me a pioneer in this new scientific discipline in my country and I really want to keep working in this field.

Research Interests: Life understanding through evolution is my passion. I am an undergraduate student in Biology oriented in microbiology. I have been working those few years with the biology of the fungus growing ants as intern in the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Here in the department of behavior and evolution I start my travel into scientific research, studying how ants interact with microorganisms, how ants work against diseases, evolution of profilactic behaviors in the fungus growing ants, simbiosis, antagonism, co-evolution, bacterias, fungus, antibiotics, ecology are terms with that I have been familiarized. The development of engineered biology became one of my interest when I was studying microbial genetics, the manipulation of DNA brings to us a full knowledge of how life works and I am really interested to be involved of this kind of investigations. Now with iGEM, the Synthetic Biology appears to me as one step further of biology engineering and I am doing a complete diving in biotechnology techniques with the aim to learn how to design and modify biological systems. I will keep studying and working in this field because it leads us to the full application of biology as a substance.