Team:Amsterdam/Team/Advisors

From 2011.igem.org

Supervisors

The team is under the supervision of different teachers and scientists from Amsterdam’s two universities: the VU and the UvA. In the short paragraphs below you can find out about who they are and what role they play in team iGEM Amsterdam 2011.

Dr. Domenico Bellomo

Department: Molecular Cellphysiology, VU
Team role: Instructor

Domenico is a postdoc in the Systems Bioinformatics IBIVU at the VU University Amsterdam. Trained as an electrical engineer with a specialization in systems and control theory, he now enjoys himself as a computational biologist. He is interested in understanding the decision & control machinery of the cell (systems biology), and in tinkering with it (synthetic biology). Since 2008, he has joined different iGEM teams as instructor and is still not fed up with it...

Dr. Pernette Verschure

Department: Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences, UvA
Team role: Instructor and advisor

Pernette Verschure is Assistant Professor at the University of Amsterdam, leading a research team focusing on the rules that dictate mammalian epigenetic gene regulation using a systems and synthetic biology approach. She is very enthusiastic about using the rational design of synthetic cell systems to uncover systems behavior ultimately providing tools and solutions for public health problems. Presently, Pernette is instructor and advisor of the iGEM team. Pernette is exceedingly positive about student learning through the iGEM competition, since it clearly stimulates creativity of multidisciplinary students. It also gives students a taste of their future careers as independent scientists by making them responsible for their own fund raising and PR as well as socio-public awareness.

Prof. dr. Bas Teusink

Department: Molecular Cellphysiology, VU
Team role: Advisor

Bas Teusink studied (bio)chemistry in Amsterdam and obtained his PhD in theoretical biochemistry at the University of Amsterdam in 1999. In 2008 he became full professor in Systems Biology, in particular Integrative Bioinformatics, at the VU University Amsterdam. His group focuses on understanding the regulation of metabolic networks using a combination of theory and modeling, quantitative experimentation and laboratory evolution experiments.

Dr. Douwe Molenaar

Department: Molecular Cellphysiology, VU
Team role: Advisor

Douwe studied biology in Groningen, and obtained a PhD degree in molecular microbiology. He then moved to the fields of theoretical biochemistry (Amsterdam), microbial bioenergetics & enzymology (Duesseldorf) and genomics and bioinformatics (Wageningen and Ede). The recurring interests in these fields are evolutionary biology, extracting knowledge from data and modeling of life. Currently Douwe is a researcher in the Systems Bioinformatics group of Bas Teusink at the VU University.

Dr. Frederic Cremazy

Department: Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences, UvA
Team role: Bench supervisor

F. Crémazy is Assistant Professor at the University of Versailles St Quentin in France and guest at the University of Amsterdam. He aims to unravel the connection between nuclear architecture, chromatin structure and gene expression using imaging and molecular biology. He is one of the bench supervisors of the team.


Lisette Anink MSc.

Department: Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences, UvA
Team role: Bench supervisor

Lisette is a PhD student at the University of Amsterdam doing her thesis on epigenetic gene regulation in the group of Pernette Verschure. She is trying to change the regulatory state of genes by changing their epigenetic environment. If she had heard of iGEM while she was still a student Lisette would have joined the team. Now she has to be content with being a supervisor.

Ing. Diewertje Piebes

Department: Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences, UvA
Team role: Bench supervisor

Diewertje Piebes is a PhD student at the University of Amsterdam, aiming to unravel the connection between chromatin structures, transcription, and epigenetics in time, by creating a synthetic cell system and using microscopy for single cell measurements. She is one of the team's bench supervisor.