Bernard “Big Ben” Cammarata

Originating from the small town of Southborough, Massachusetts, Ben always had big things on his mind. Like real big. Cornell big. After being accepted into Cornell in 2007 (he is currently a junior BEE major), Ben set his sights on curing all the world’s problems. How did he plan on doing this? Well, establishing a universal dictatorship solely under his control did not work out so well, so he decided to join the Cornell Genetically Engineered Machines team instead.

Alyssa “Adrenaline” Henning

Alyssa, a senior Bioengineering major, was raised by penguins after she fell out of a boat. She graduated as a valedictorian from Bakersfield High School in California, where it never snows, and then found herself attending Cornell University, where it often snows, making her surrogate penguin parents quite happy. After making 3D movies of embryonic organogenesis via micro-CT (X-ray imaging) in Dr. Jonathan Butcher's lab and hanging out with the CU GEM team for almost three years, she has found that not everything can be reduced to black or white. (Cells can fluoresce in different colors.) When she is not in the lab, she enjoys playing her clarinet, hitting people with Kali Eskrima sticks, hitting even more people with Muay Thai boxing gloves and shin guards, and flying fiery, avian creations off of roofs of Engineering College buildings.

Malinka Walaliyadde

Malinka Walaliyadde was born in Sri Lanka but moved to the UAE when he was 6 months old and basically grew up there. He is currently a junior at Cornell University and is a confused Materials Science Engineering major who has an almost unhealthy interest in molecular biology. When he applied to the GEM team as a freshman, the team leader at the time was hesitant about taking him on because he couldn’t handle a pipette, let alone clone stuff. However his awesomeness shone through and he was let in, which was a good thing because he has continued to be awesome ever since.

Maneesh "The Mathemagical Beast" Gupta

The brainchild of a Cornell mathematics student and the number 42, Maneesh is the result of the cross product between complex eigenvectors and the spherical coordinate system. Needless to say Maneesh can only communicate to others by using Fourier Transforms. Being a beast of mathematics Maneesh tested out of every single math class that was offered at Cornell. He then became the head of the Mathematics department but was quickly fired after it was discovered that he was using Taylor series expansions on undergrads. When asked why he wanted to join the Cornell Genetically Engineered Machines team he responded by solving the Schrödinger equation for E. Coli.

Deborah Liu

Deborah is a sophomore Chemical Engineer from San Francisco, California. She’s usually described as "way too intense", but is working on being more amiable. If not working on problem sets or making/eating delicious food, she can always be found not getting enough sleep or correcting other people’s grammar.

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Jim Matthew

James Mathew is a sophomore Biological Engineering student at Cornell University interested in biomolecular and protein engineering. Besides enjoying long walks on the beach, James also prefers spending his extra time working on a device to detect infectious diseases using DNA-nanobarcodes in Dr. Dan Luo’s research laboratory, and organizing campus events for the Cornell Entrepreneur Organization. After moving to New York, James developed low iron levels from a sore lacking of good beef from his home state of Nebraska. He joined CUGEM for the cool stickers and stayed for the creative freedom to invent and explore the possibilities of synthetic biology.