Latest revision as of 01:07, 18 October 2018

Attributions

Over the spring, summer, and fall, we have had tremendous help from a number of generous individuals. Thank you so much to everyone. We can’t express our gratitude for all the help, guidance, and support you’ve given us.

Researchers and Experts

The Virginia IGEM team would not be where it is today without the tremendous help of several brilliant minds. Thank you to all of them.

William E. Bentley and Kristina Stephens, Researcher in the Bentley Lab

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   <img src="" alt="WilliamBentley" class="attributions">
   <figcaption>Figure 1: William E. Bentley (UMD faculty website). </figcaption>

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William E. Bentley and Kristina Stephens, Researcher in the Bentley Lab

William E. Bentley is the Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Fischell Department of Bioengineering and a professor in the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering department at the University of Maryland. Since much of his research focuses on the expression of biologically active proteins and quorum sensing, we have referenced many of his papers within the context of our research. We have also requested and received W3110 E. coli from his lab.

We would like to thank the lab of Dr. Bentley and specifically our point of contact, Kristina Stephens, at UMD for sending several plasmids and cell lines that Amin Zargar used in his research. It was important to have these parts because we were able to validate Zargar’s research and test our parts in his chassis also.

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   <img src="" alt="DrewEndy" class="attributions">
   <figcaption> Figure 2: Drew Endy (indiebio.com). </figcaption>

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Drew Endy

Drew Endy is a prominent figure in the synthetic biology community and the professor of bioengineering at Stanford University in California. We are thankful for his help in shipping us a plasmid for Clontegration for our project.

Steven Graff

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   <img src="" alt="StevenGraff" class="attributions">
   <figcaption> Figure 3: Steven Graff (LinkedIn). </figcaption>

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Steven Graff

Steven Graff's paper, "A Mathematical Model to Study the Role of the Lsr Intergenic Region in Mediation of Autoinducer-2 Quorum Sensing in Escherichia Coli" has been an important modeling reference for our project. After we reached out to him, Steven Graff graciously allowed us to use his models and parameters and has given us invaluable advice for our modeling our project.

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   <img src="" alt="Hooshangi" class="attributions">
   <figcaption>Figure 4: Dr. Sara Hooshangi (cps.gwu.edu). </figcaption>

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Dr. Sara Hooshangi

Dr. Sara Hooshangi is an associate professor at George Washington University. Her paper, "LsrR Quorum Sensing 'Switch' Is Revealed by a Bottom-Up Approach" has been notable reference for modeling our system.

Paul Humphreys

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   <img src="" alt="Humphreys" class="attributions">
   <figcaption> Figure 5: Paul Humphreys (viginia.edu). </figcaption>

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Paul Humphreys is a Commonwealth Professor of Philosophy of Science at UVA. Professor Humphreys gave us advice on how to connect quorum sensing to our human practices. He provided us a philosophical perspective to our research and really made us dive into the ethics of synthetic biology. Talking to him early in the summer help us shape our integrated human practices and helped us created our video about quorum sensing.

Shaun Moshasha

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   <img src="" alt="ShaunMoshasha" class="attributions">
   <figcaption>Figure 6: Shaun Moshasha (bio.science.com). </figcaption>

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Shaun Moshasha is the Executive Director of <a href="http://openbiolabs.org/">Open Bio Labs</a> in Charlottesville, VA. Sean helped the human practices committee extensively. As an alumnus of Virginia iGEM, he was a great resource to ask about various iGEM related procedures.

He helped design our GMO forum and let us help him teach middle and high schoolers about synthetic biology at CATEC. We also had a great time making paper at Open Biolabs from bacterial cellulose. He helped us write our financial analysis report which was key to highlight the importance of our project.

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   <img src="" alt="CharlesRichardson" class="attributions">
   <figcaption>Figure 7: Charles Richardson (openbiolabs.org). </figcaption>

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Charles Richardson

Charles Richardson is a postdoctoral student studying Chemical Engineering at the University of Virginia. He is also the Director of Education at <a href="http://openbiolabs.org/">Open Bio Labs</a> and has given us valuable advice on the applications, feasibility, and scope of our project.

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   <img src="" alt="Saucerman" class="attributions">
   <figcaption>Figure 8: Jeffrey Saucerman (virginia.edu). </figcaption>

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Jeffrey Saucerman

Jeffrey Saucerman is the Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at UVA. Professor Saucerman aided our modeling team immensely and helped us understand how to model enzyme kinetics.

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   <img src="" alt="Sturgill" class="attributions">
   <figcaption>Figure 9: Beattie Sturgill (LinkedIn). </figcaption>

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Beattie Sturgill

Beattie Sturgill was our PurSolutions Contact. Thank you to Beattie Sturgill for helping us design our seminar which Pur Solutions created modules for. We are also grateful for the various reagents including an NEB Golden Gate reaction mix that he graciously bought for us!

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   <img src="" alt="Madison" class="attributions">
   <figcaption>Figure 10: Madison Telles Photo provided</figcaption>

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Madison Telles

Madison Telles is our Commissioned Illustrator! Thank you to Madison Telles for helping us in the last few weeks of the project. She is a digital artist who specializes in character design, and we commissioned her to work on the banners seen at the head of every major section of our Wiki; her illustrations added a bit of flair to the Wiki that was missing before.

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   <img src="" alt="AminZargar" class="attributions">
   <figcaption>Figure 11: Amin Zargar (LinkedIn). </figcaption>

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Amin Zargar

Amin Zargar's paper, "Enhancing Intercellular Coordination: Rewiring Quorum Sensing Networks for Increased Protein Expression through Autonomous Induction" significantly helped us guide our project. We were fortunate enough to be able to contact him through Skype and ask him for advice on various aspects of our project.

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   <img src="" alt="Zorychta" class="attributions">
   <figcaption>Figure 12: Alexander Zorychta (virginia.edu). </figcaption>

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Alexander Zorychta

Alexander Zorychta is the coordinator for Student Entrepreneurs Program, the director for Works in Progress at UVA, and an alumnus of Virginia iGEM. We want to thank Mr. Zorychta for advising and helping us develop our <a href="https://2018.igem.org/Team:Virginia/Public_Engagement" target="_blank">discussion packet</a> on GMO products.

University of Virginia iGEM

Kay Christopher

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   <img src="" alt="Kay" class="attributions">
   <figcaption> Figure 13: Kay Christopher (UVA Biology). </figcaption>

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Kay Christopher is a Preparator for Upper Levels in the UVA Biology Department. Ms. Christopher is one the few people that saw our hard work everyday. She maintained our lab daily. All orders went through her. She taught us basic lab safety and several neat tricks in lab. She was always there to answer any questions we had. Gilmer 148, our lab, wouldn’t have been the well maintained and constructive workspace it was if weren’t for her hard work and supervision.

Keith Kozminski

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   <img src="" alt="Kozminski" class="attributions">
   <figcaption> Figure 14: Keith Kozminski (UVA Biology). </figcaption>

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Keith Kozminski is the Associate Professor of Biology and Cell Biology at UVA. Professor Kozminski is the primary advisor for Virginia iGEM, and he has a special place in our hearts. He guided our research from beginning to end. He answered our endless questions and kept us on track. When he wasn’t in the building, he was only a phone call away. He taught us many of the lab techniques we know today. He fought for our funding endlessly. We could go on and on about Professor Kozminski’s contribution to the team, but that would need its own Wiki page.

We would like to sincerely thank him for his dedication to the team.

Patty Marshall and Mary Liberman

   <img src="" alt="Marshall" class="attributions">
   <figcaption>Figure 15: Patty Marshall (UVA Biology). </figcaption>

   <img src="" alt="Liberman" class="attributions">
   <figcaption> Figure 16: Mary Liberman (UVA Biology). </figcaption>

Patty Marshall is the Grants Specialist at UVA Department of Biology and Mary Liberman, Fiscal Technician at UVA Department of Biology. We would like to thank Ms. Marshall and Ms. Liberman for helping our financial team handle the use of our funds. Without their assistance and administrative knowhow, our financial activities and MTAs would have been much more time consuming.

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   <img src="" alt="Papin" class="attributions">
   <figcaption>Figure 17: Jason Papin (virginia.edu). </figcaption>

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Jason Papin

Jason Papin is the Professor of Biomedical Engineering at UVA. Professor Papin was vital to kickstart our modeling team. He advised us early on how to approach our model with several tips. Professor Papin is one of the two advisors for Virginia iGEM.

UVA Flow Cytometry Center

We would like to thank everyone that worked with us at the UVA Flow Cytometry center. They helped us run many of our flow assays to measure sfGFP expression in our cells. They showed us how to use the software and helped us analyze much of data.

UVA ARCS

We'd like to thank the Advanced Research Computing Services' High Power Computing division for giving our team an allocation on their Rivanna computing cluster free of charge. With their support we were able to run upwards of 30 population models in parallels for several days at a time. Without Rivanna, we wouldn't have had the computing power to perform sensitivity tests and complete our model in a reasonable amount of time.

Our Committees

Wetlab Committee

Thank you to our Wetlab committee for spending endless hours in the lab designing and testing our construct.

• Ngozi Akingbesote
• Nir Diskin
• William Huang
• Paul Imbrogulio
• Nick Marotta
• Kevin Park
• Vignesh Valaboju

Modeling Committee

Thank you to our Modeling Committee for grinding away on Matlab to create a mathematical model of our system.

• Dylan Culfogienis
• Nir Diskin
• Joseph Outten
• Ryan Taylor
• Grace Wu

Wiki Committee

Thank you to our Wiki Committee for writing thousands of lines of code to create this beautiful Wiki along with the several Wiki tools they created for iGEM.

• Dylan Culfogienis
• Grace Wu

Human Practices Committee

Thank you to our Human Practice Committee for connecting us to the community and planning several events to showcase our project and synthetic biology overall.

• Nir Diskin
• Joseph Outten
• Kevin Park
• Ryan Taylor
• Grace Wu
• Angela Yi

Poster and Presentation Committee

Thank you to our Poster and Presentation Committee for creating a wonderful presentation and stunning poster to highlight at the Giant Jamboree.

• Dylan Culfogienis
• William Huang
• Joseph Outten
• Nick Marotta
• Ryan Taylor
• Vignesh Valaboju

Financial Committee

Thank you to our Financial Committee for keeping our placing dozens of orders and keeping our financial books in check so that we are able make our trip to Boston.

• Dylan Culfogienis
• Joseph Outten
• Ryan Taylor

Inspiration

We took some inspiration from these past teams wikis:
<a href="https://2017.igem.org/Team:Heidelberg/">2017 Heidelberg</a>
<a href="https://2013.igem.org/Team:SDU-Denmark">2013 SDU Denmark</a>