Introduction

Amazingly our project would not have been a success without a holistic support and great team work from different individuals including the team members.

Here you can found out who managed to contribute what efforts to this great project to make it possible.

The Instructors and Advisers

We acknowledge the great work done by our instructors and advisers. These include;

1. Mr. Otim Geoffrey who helped us in team registration, general and technical advice in Synthetic biology and also introduced to us about the IGEM competition.
2. Dr. Steven Odongo who helped us in designing protocols, DNA sequencing and general advice about the lab work.
   
3. Dr. Ann Nanteza who gave us advice in transformation , restriction digest and protein expression.
4. Dr. Margaret Saimo-Kahwa who helped monitor our lab progress.

Principal Investigators(PI's)

1. Dr. Julius Boniface Okuni
   

   Julius has a Bachelor of Veterinary Medicine (BVM), Msc in Veterinary Pathology and a PhD in Molecular Pathobiology. He is an Associate Professor and currently the Chair of the department of Biomolecular Resources and Biolab sciences in Makerere University.
   He is currently a PI on a project on the molecular evolution of Mycobacterium paratuberculosis. He has accomplished several research projects on paratuberculosis, African swine fever, porcine circovirus among others. I have had a very fruitful interaction with my iGEM team who have been very committed to all their tasks. At the commencement, I formed an advisory committee of 4 faculty members including myself to discuss the project from design and its implementation. We met our team several times to discuss the progress. iGEM team members have actively participated in looking for information, carrying out benchwork and trouble shooting. I salute their patience and resilience when the going was tough due to lack of one or materials.
   In this regard, I appreciate their initiative to network with other teams for material support. We could not participate in the interlab study because our equipment broke down before we could participate but thankfully, the team kept their spirits high.

   
   
2. Dr. Ann Kazibwe
   
   

Special thanks to Mr. Silver for the support he gave us in the lab work especially providing us with the lab space and equipment but also introduced us to the lab regulations and safety measures.

Dr. Ann Nanteza who helped us in the lab work during expression procedures and general lab mentor-ship

Public Engagement

We would like to acknowledge Dr. Gabriel Tumwine for giving us slots in the summer scientific conference and the annual cultural BOMA where we extended the knowledge of synthetic biology through presentations during seminar reviews.

We would also like to acknowledge the duties, mentorship and advice from Japheth Kelly who is the ambassador of iGEM to Africa. He helped us in overcoming many obstacles and milestones through this journey since we were naive and he had the experience. Kelly also connected us to many iGEM teams for collaborations.

The wiki masters

1. David Wagaba helped to design the layout of the wiki and link the pages with his knowledge of web designing.
2. David Nalumenya helped to provide content for the lab protocols and results for the wiki.
3. Alex Kyabarongo helped in filling in the judging form and providing a link for it.

The Lab work

With division of responsibilities, some team members namely; David Nalumenya who spear headed all the duties in the lab with the help of Patience, Henry, Wycliff, Ronald, Pius and Paul. We highly acknowledge their contributions to the success of our project.

Our Sponsors

1. Twist Bioscience: This great company based in San Fransisco, California USA provided us with the greatest financial support and we count them as our gold medal sponsors. They catered for our registration and travel costs.
   


2. IDT: They provided us with genes MHETase and PETase which aided in our lab work.
   


3. Promega :They provided us with reagents for the lab work.
   


4. Opentrons: They provided us with an OT-2 micro-pipetting robot which helped us in the lab work.
   


5. Makerere University: They provided us laboratory space and equipment for our project to run.
   


6. National Water and Sewage Corporation, Uganda: provided us with financial support.
   

Sponsors