Team:IISER-Bhopal-India/Team
Team Members
Jatin is a fourth year undergraduate student pursuing a BS-MS degree in Biological Sciences. As a team leader, and a firm believer of togetherness, he is responsible for creating a space for the team to talk, discuss, prosper and get things done at the right time.
Being involved in the project since its inception, he has looked after crucial decisions such as organising the first ever meeting about iGEM in the campus, building up the team, developing the project idea, managing peers and channelizing their skills for the betterment of the project. At the same time, he has grown as a person by brushing up his PR skills, and as a machine by handling the communication among the team members like an efficient relay node.
When he is not busy coordinating events, he pens poems and composes songs.
Jatin Khaimani
STUDENT LEADER
Arundhati is a fourth year BSMS student majoring in Biological Sciences. Though she hates waking up in the morning, one can always find her in the early hours at the laboratory acting as an adorable human chaperone trying to generate meaningful work. Along with the post of Lab Head, she serves as the second team leader readily answering all experimental queries with an astonishing calm.
Some of her main contributions include collecting InterLab data, maintaining lab records and occasional outreach. She is motivated for experiencing science from a different perspective, learning new techniques and developing a scientific thought process.
Outside the lab, her interests include playing badminton, sleeping, watching movies and performing magic tricks. She also loves reading, writing, and ruminating about philosophy and nature.
Arundhati Khenwar
STUDENT LEADER
Shrestha is a third year Biology Major and the youngest member on the team roster. One of the driving forces for her to join Team MethNote was, to experience the development of a project from its ideation to implementation and being able to influence it along the way.
Apart from chipping in for extensive literature review regarding the scope of the project, she has helped towards finalising the work strategy and designing primers and vector maps, in silico. She has also done extensive Wet Lab work which also provided her an insight into worldwide BioSafety standards.
Among the numerous responsibilities, she considers writing and tailoring the content of our project proposals according to specific audiences and managing the team's social media handles her favourite ones. While she maintains an intimidating seriousness at work, she utilizes her free time getting distracted by world politics, chocolate-binging and having a penchant for books on the Brain.
Shrestha Rath
A 4th-year BS-MS dual degree student in Biology who wants to make a difference in society - that’s pretty much about her! Fathima’s prime motivation for working for team iGEM IISER Bhopal stems from the possibility of stumbling upon solutions for the persisting problems in the world around us. She believes that iGEM has given her an opportunity, confidence and skill to meet and interact with new people, and experience teamwork from the very beginning to the end. What especially gives her a kick, is seeing the team’s brainchild come to life, which is a lot more that what regular academics can offer.
Apart from lab work, she is busy coordinating events, meeting deadlines and managing the outreach.
She also loves to read books, travel and keeps herself immersed in social activities.
Fathima Afsal
Currently a 4th year undergraduate BS-MS Student at IISER Bhopal, he is majoring in biological sciences. His main role in this project is to lead Human Practices and Integrated Human Practices section for the team. In the Wet Lab he has performed different sets of cloning based experiments. Apart from this, he has also built collaborations with different teams and handled social media.
His profound love for Astronomy inspired his interest in "Astrobiology”. Besides this, he loves to act, play harmonica, solve ancient cryptography problems & watch MMA. iGEM, for him, is the land of opportunity that allows him to indulge his creative side, and is scientifically solid and fun to do all at the same time.
Harshal Wasnik
Currently, in his 4th year pursuing BS-MS Biology, Tejas started off his journey wanting to pursue Physics, but a sudden shift took over when he realised there's also an entire universe within.
He likes to think of himself as Phil from the "Hangover" movie (but comes off more as Stu). His role in the project can be summed up in the immortal words of Inspector Lestrade of BBC Sherlock, "Not my Division!". Jokes apart, he's one of the guys who gets his hands dirty doing the witty and gritty wet-lab work. Along with two other comrades, he successfully completed the Interlab study. He is one of the brains that contribute to brainstorming sessions for designing and troubleshooting experiments. Outside lab, he dons the hat of a skillful presenter.
His life without iGEM mainly consists of novels, e-sports and Netflix without the Chill!
Tejas Somvanshi
Aditi is a 4th year BS-MS student, majoring in Chemistry. She is focused on getting in-silico results by doing metabolic modeling of our chassis organism Pichia pastoris. She is also involved in the project Outreach for Human Practices. Her interests include interdisciplinary sciences such as Chemical biology, which was what drove her to joining our iGEM team. Apart from the fun parties, she considers sense of collective effort and broader perspective as the added perks of working as a part of a team. Aditi believes that hard work and devotion can make dreams come true and that one must keep learning for there is a vast ocean of undiscovered knowledge waiting for us to dive in!
Aditi Maheshwari
A 4th year Biology undergraduate pursuing BS-MS, Anand's role is focussed towards managing the team wiki, heading Outreach and creating graphic designs and flowcharts for explanations. He is also a good presenter and a lab hand.
iGEM appeals to him because he thinks of it as a scientific version of building blocks which gives an opportunity to freely brainstorm to build something that can create a difference. Spirituality, plant biology, astrobiology and emergence are some of his favorites topics of discussion. He thinks about grass and mushrooms in his solitude.
Anand Golait
Anubhav is an enthusiastic 4th year Biology undergrad whose talents include the ability to spend all day at the lab setting up and doing experiments, and formulating theoretical strategies for the same. iGEM was the perfect platform for Basu to display his intellect and handy knowledge over practical concepts in biology. He loves thinking about new ideas and exploring them with a view to uncover something new or make an impactful change in people's lives .
When not science-ing, he likes to delve into DOTA, Poker and lawn tennis. It is very common to find him loitering around the campus speculating about the universe, food and memes.
Anubhav Basu
Rishi Gandhi is the name of a gentle workhorse in our team, who is passionate about lab work. One can find him at odd times in the lab carrying out experiments and fooling around simultaneously. He displays an extraordinary desire to get his hands wet in the Wet Lab to gain experience of fundamental lab work, almost as if he is getting paid for it. Rishi has also helped with graphic design and making posters for iGEM Day.
Outside the lab, he gets busy collecting mosses and trying to find more literature about water bears.
Rishi Gandhi
Primary Principal Investigator
Dr. Vineet Kumar Sharma is an Associate Professor who leads the MetaBioSys Group at IISER Bhopal. He is our principal investigator, and through ongoing work in his metagenomics lab he actively helped us in the ideation of our project. He provided us feedback and aesthetic suggestions periodically. He guided us through several practical issues, while improving our presentation skills.
Dr. Vineet K. Sharma
Secondary Principal Investigators
Dr. Lavanya is an instructor in department of biological sciences. She has been the backbone of our project throughout its course of completion. She keeps looking for better ways to inculcate aptitude to research and soft skills required to build a career in science. This search has introduced iGEM to IISER Bhopal. She is involved in most of the team activities in lab and beyond, right from the ideation of the project. She was involved from initial stages of pre-ideation, interacting with team on daily basis, cross checking the work strategy, documentation and part submission. Also, she supported the team in planning and execution of human practices and outreach.
DR. Lavanya Bhagavatula
Dr. Chandan Sahi is an Assistant Professor who leads the Chaperone and Stress Biology lab at Department of Biological Sciences, IISER Bhopal. He is our secondary principal investigator, whose expertise in yeast system and molecular biology helped us a lot in devising the experimental strategy for this project. He was instrumental in shaping our Jamboree presentation by giving critical suggestions for improvement. His lab has always come to our help when we ran out of resources and provided us with extra helping hands when we needed them badly.
Dr. Chandan Sahi
Instructors
Mr. Sandeep Raut is a PhD scholar working with Dr. Chandan Sahi at Chaperone and Stress Biology Laboratory, Department of Biological Sciences, IISER Bhopal. He is currently associated with Incubation and Innovation Centre for Entrepreneurship (IICE) as Incubation Manager. He worked with Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a model system during his graduate research and he actively helped us with his experience in molecular biology and yeast genetics. He helped us with devising the cloning strategy to deal with cloning multiple sMMO genes in Pichia pastoris expression vectors. He helped us with soeing PCR and making super-competent E. coli, DH5 alpha cells for cloning. His suggestions were invaluable during writing the experimental results and finalizing figures to be displayed on wikipage and iGEM presentation.
Mr. Sandeep Raut
Mr. Ankit Gupta is a PhD Scholar working with Dr. Vineet Kumar Sharma in the MetaBioSys Laboratory, Department of Biological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Bhopal. He worked on developing a machine learning based prediction tool to predict pathogenic proteins in Genomic and Metagenomic datasets. He helped us develop the metabolic model for our project by instructing us in using MATLAB software for Flux Balance Analysis. He also helped us design the poster during the All-India iGEM Meetup 2018.