Team:William and Mary/Team
Meet the Team
Xiangyi Fang
Xiangyi Fang is a sophomore majoring biology. Her favorite lab work is pipetting, and her lifetime goal is to get every single drop out of pipette tips. In her spare time she is usually wandering around Williamsburg finding antique stores. She enjoys chopping vegetables and changing wallpapers.
Ethan Jones
Ethan is a senior majoring in Biology and Computational & Applied Mathematics & Statistics and is the student leader of this year's iGEM team. In his spare time, he enjoys cultivating international relationships via hybrid image-text exchange forums and doing non iGEM synthetic biology projects.
Jessica Laury
Jessica Laury is a senior studying biology and business. She was this years outreach coordinator. In her free time she enjoys naming inanimate objects and loving on any animals close enough to pet. In lab her favorite activity is colony PCR.
Lillian Parr
Lillian Parr is a wet lab team member majoring in biology. She is a sophomore from Chevy Chase, Maryland. In her free time, Lillian is a part of a contemporary dance company. Lillian's favorite things to do in lab are freezing cells in liquid nitrogen and plating E. coli with glass beads.
Stephanie Do
Stephanie Do is a sophomore majoring in biology. She is a firm advocate of “positive vibes only” and believes the lab needs to visit Tropical Smoothie more. In her free time she is either sleeping, reading, or showing the team pictures of her baby brother. Her favorite lab activity is watching netflix while doing colony PCRs.
Julia Urban
Julia Urban is a sophomore wetlab team member who is pushing off declaring her major to the very last second (though she’s leaning towards CAMS-Mathematical Biology). The team’s resident artist, she dabbles in acrylic paint when not designing team logos and graphics. Her favorite lab activity is punching out bands during gel extractions. When she’s not in lab, you can find her at Wawa.
Adam Oliver
Adam Oliver is a sophomore who is majoring in CAMS-Mathematical biology and minoring in Computer Science. He believes that gel extraction protocols are based off of higher dimensional magic, and extra wash steps will appease the being who grants good concentrations and purity ratios. He likes to listen to podcasts and music whenever feasibly possible. His favorite lab activity is performing gel extractions, as he hopes this will bring about higher DNA concentrations and purities.
Yashna Verma
Yashna Verma is a sophomore majoring in Biology and minoring in Chemistry. She is a member of the wet lab team and also coded the wiki. In her free time, she enjoys doing Bhangra (a form of Indian dance) and loves watching movies. Some of her favorite TV shows include White Collar, Psych, and Grey’s Anatomy. She really enjoys playing with puppies and is obsessed with dark chocolate. In lab, one of her favorite things to do is load a gel.
Chengwu Shen
Chengwu is a senior major in Mathematics and Minoring in Computer Science. He likes doing different kinds of mathematical simulations and modeling, especially about Operations Research and Differential Equations. He used to play basketball and running before he broke his ankle. Now he does simple workouts.
Tinh Son
Sculpted from the five elements, Tinh is trekking through his 15th grade with equanimity and is fully aware of his impending adulthood. He does math, and loves staying hydrated to maintain good skin tone. He does not work in the lab because thermocyclers and other lab machines create terrible background noise (although he admits his fascination with pipetting unknown substances, which he believes is just all witchcraft). As for future job, Tinh really hopes that he does not have to code in a cubicle. He still needs to find a favorite pastime.
Hanmi Zou
This is Hanmi Zou, she is a Junior majoring in Applied Mathematics and Psychology. Her favorite part of math is modeling, and last semester Chengwu and her generated an algorithm to optimize the matching between incoming freshmen and pre-major advisors. For Psych, her favorite part is cognitive psychology. She loves all spicy foods, cats, and Fridays. During her free time, she like to get enough sleep.
Dr. Saha
Dr. Margaret Saha is a Chancellor Professor of Biology at the College of William and Mary with affiliate appointments in the Neuroscience Program and the Department of Applied Science. She completed a Ph.D in the History of Science from Michigan State University and a Ph.D. in Developmental Biology from the University of Virginia. She joined the faculty of the Biology Department at the College of William and Mary in 1993 where she has taught Developmental Biology, Introductory Biology, Phage Lab, Freshmen Genomics Lab, as well as upper level seminars in bioinformatics, synthetic biology, and developmental neurobiology.
Dr. Patel
Dr. Mainak Patel is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the College of William and Mary with an affiliate appointment in the Neuroscience Program. He completed an M.D. from New York University and a Ph.D in Computational Biology (focusing on neuronal modeling) from the Courant Institute for Applied Mathematics (New York University). He joined the faculty of the Mathematics Department at the College of William and Mary in 2014 where he has taught Calculus, Differential Equations, Nonlinear Dynamics, and Mathematical Biology.