Team:British Columbia/Team

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UBC iGEM 2010

Our team is composed of 9 undergraduate students, 2 graduate advisors and 3 faculty advisors. We are a diverse team from various disciplines including Pharmacology, Life Sciences, Physiology, Chemical and Biological Engineering, Materials Engineering, Engineering Physics and Computer Science. This page describes each team member and their contributions! If you'd like to see our license, visit our official team profile.

Feel free to say hi if you bump into us at Jamboree! Or send us an email at ubcigem@gmail.com!

Faculty Advisors

Eric Lagally: Assistant Professor in Chemical and Biological Engineering
Dr. Lagally plays an important role in mentoring the team and securing funding and lab space ;) This is the 2nd year that Dr. Lagally is supervising the UBC iGEM team. Our human practices promoter maps are his brain-children.

Joanne Fox: Advanced Molecular Biology Laboratory Instructor
Dr. Fox organizes the laboratory training for iGEM team members and coaches them to identify and nurture different soft and hard skills.

Leonard Foster: Associate Professor in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology

Graduate Student Advisors

Alina Chan: PhD candidate in Biochemistry at the Hieter lab, UBC.
Alina helps the team with their project design, wet-lab protocols, trouble-shooting, and soft skills. She's the wiki-mom and has also helped to initiate some of our human practices artistic collaborations.

Rafael Saer: PhD candidate in Microbiology and Immunology at the Beatty lab, UBC.
Rafael helps the team with their project design, wet-lab protocols and trouble-shooting. His experience working with bacteria is indispensable to the team as they attempt to use Staphylococcus aureus as a new iGEM chassis.

iGEM Team Members

Emily Chang: Major in Pharmacology.
Member of the Phage sub-team.

Eric Finlay: Major in Engineering Physics.
Member of the Biofilm, Modeling and Phage sub-teams. The Biofilm sub-team has worked long hours to obtain biofilm data crucial to the project and its model! Creator of the phage standard! Eric will be presenting at the iGEM Jamboree!

Jason Gao: Major in Materials Engineering.
Member of the Biofilm, Phage and Quorum-sensing sub-teams.

Kevin Yang: Major in Physiology.
Member of the Quorum-sensing sub-team. The quorum-sensing sub-team has been working on obtaining the P2 Staphylococcus aureus quorum-sensing promoter and characterizing it in S. aureus.

Marianne Park: Major in General Sciences.
Member of the incredibly hard-working DspB sub-team. This sub-team has slaved to obtain and characterize their biofilm matrix-degrading enzyme, DspB as an iGEM Biobricks part! Marianne will be presenting at the iGEM Jamboree!

Melody Wang: Major in Microbiology and Immunology.
Member of the Biofilm, Phage and Human Practices (promoter maps) sub-teams. The Biofilm sub-team has worked long hours to obtain biofilm data crucial to the project and its model! Melody will be presenting at the iGEM Jamboree!

Phillip Chu: BASc Chemical and Biological Engineering.
Member of the Quorum-sensing and Modeling sub-teams. The quorum-sensing sub-team has been working on characterizing the P2 Staphylococcus aureus quorum-sensing promoter S. aureus. Also worked on obtaining natural S. aureus agrAC quorum sensing proteins and obtaining S. aureus vector replicon as Biobrick parts.

Shing Hei Zhan: BSc Genetics.
Recently joined the BC Genome Sciences Centre as a computational biologist. Formerly a bioinformatician and evolutionary biologist at the Rieseberg Lab and Otto Lab at the UBC Biodiversity Research Centre.
Shing is the brains of our Modeling sub-team. Check out our awesome model and simulation!

Vicki Ma: Major in General Sciences.
Member of the incredibly hard-working DspB sub-team. This sub-team has slaved to obtain and characterize their biofilm matrix-degrading enzyme, DspB as an iGEM Biobricks part! Vicki will be presenting at the iGEM Jamboree!

2009 iGEM Students-turned-Mentors

Calvin Chan: Major in Chemical and Biological Engineering

Charles Howes: Bioinformatician in the Hallam Lab at UBC, BSc Computer Science, BSc Biotechnology.
Charles attends team meetings and helps to guide the team through their project design. He helps the bioinformatics group with their design decisions in the biofilm model, and contributed a simplified model written in perl early on.

Eric Ma: BSc Integrated Sciences (Microbiology, Biochemistry & Cancer Biology); Soon-to-be Voigt lab research assistant come November!
Eric is a committed mentor who attends team meetings and coaches the team through everything from project design to Jamboree preparation! You can often find him in the lab running through protocols with the team! He is also the blankets and pillows courier servicer for all-nighters in the lab.

UBC iGEM Words of Wisdom

You can't optimize what you don't have - Eric L.

Do what makes you happy, and everything else will follow - Eric L.

My motto: To give more of yourself than you take away. - Alina

UBC iGEM Wall of Quotes

The only lesson I've learnt so far is "I have to do it again." - Phillip

iGEM: New and interesting ways to fail. - Eric L.

I know it's nice out, but make sure you wear your pants. - Eric F.

Are they easy to contaminate? Oh, sorry, I'm Rafael by the way. - Rafael

Alina: So one PCR product was twice the size of the other and you ran both in the same PCR? Why?

Phillip: It was Phusion. I thought it was magic!

Eric F.: (on September 22) It feels like Jamboree is next week.

Alina: It's not.

I've got a few drafts, but you don't want to see it. It's mostly swear words and stuff. - Eric F.

People who don't know what synthetic biology is are at least 10 smoots away from commenting on its applications and ethics. - Alina

Alina: Maybe we should ask Red Bull for sponsorship.

Eric L.: That could be part of our human practices project-investigating which energy drink is the best.

Alina: That could be part of our gold medal achievements too-it'll help ALL of the iGEM teams.

(After 4 months of failing to obtain a S. aureus phage from another lab) I guess we should have tried a soil sample from outside the building? - Charles

So much hair... - Eric F.

If the curve looks bad, we're not doing it again. - Eric F.

(One team meeting in June 2010)
Who is Steve Jones? - Alina

(September 2010)
Who is this Elf you speak of? - Alina

(5 minutes later)
Who is this Road Warrior you speak of? - Alina

What are we talking about? Suddenly I just hear all these keywords. - Vicki

(On Shakespeare and biofilms)
Out, damn'd spot! Out, I say! - Alina

(On Jamboree) Just wait until the UBC people meet the Albertans. There's going to be trouble! - Rafael

We're all nerds here-there's no denying that! - Eric L.

Interesting how our funny quotes are 5x longer than our words of wisdom... - Alina

What does it mean---the wiki gets frozen? When does it get un-frozen? - Alina

I was intending on proofreading this and editing it significantly before sending it, but for some reason they're making me do work at work, so it has to go out as is. - Eric F.

We had a quote last night, but we can't remember it now! - Vicki and Marianne

We should send in P2-Kevin to the Parts Registry. - Phil

(Regarding the Human Practices forum posts) Finally! Someone besides me and Dr. Lagally! - Alina

(After an all-nighter...) Rick: I think you guys killed Rafael.

Eric L.: We're going to need a defrillbulator for Marianne.

Wiki: Due Monday October 25th, 2010 or else suffer Alina's wrath... - Vicki

(About the team presentation at Jamboree) Eric L.: Someone's going to wear a swimsuit, right?

Alina: It's definitely Eric F.

I'm scared. - Marianne

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