METU HS IGEM

Collaborations

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Each and every team member has shown tremendous effort for the contribution to our project despite the struggle of every iGEMmer. Also, throughout our iGEM experience, we have received help and support from many people including our teachers, instructors, some experts and sponsors. All work was carried out by student members of METU_HS_iGEM unless stated otherwise. Our principal investigator Tuğba İnanç, and secondary investigator Ceyhun Kayıhan supervised, helped and stood with us throughout the whole process.
Finally, we want to thank those who aided us financially. Thank you for putting your trust in us and for your generous donations.

Members’ Attributions

Beliz Acar Drylab worker, HP group member, Interlab

In order to carry out my job as a worker of the drylab, I have spent days mastering the registry and wrote a guideline to help out my teammates. For the reason that I was a member of our team’s Human Practices group; including me and my teammate Gamze, together we have carried out the activities, events and attended meetings. We were also on the hunt for sponsors and talked to a lot of stakeholders and by doing research I have found a sponsor for designing our prototype. I, furthermore, supported my team by filling out the “Design” and “Parts” page with great care.

Gamze Kantaş Team leader, WetLab worker, DryLab worker, HP group member, Artist, Interlab

As the team leader, I was involved in almost everything from wet lab to our paintings/drawings. One of my jobs was to write down the meeting notes and lab notebook daily in order to keep track of everything. I was also the one to check the schedule and current situation regularly to make sure that everything would be done on time. Apart from my leader duties, I was involved in wet lab and dry lab, so I did learn both how to use the registry and how to apply the protocols in lab environment. Together with Beliz, I searched sponsors, mailed and phoned them when necessary. In addition, I had a role in planning, organizing and carrying out human practices. To take the credit, I was the one who drew and detailed thousands of mascots, logos, and project ideas until they were finally decided and transferred into digital environment.

Kutay Uçan Drylab worker, Wetlab worker, Interlab leader, Modelling Man, HP helper

I was mainly focused on and had great contributions to our InterLab process as I was in charge of all of the protocols, reviewing the results and forming the excel sheet that was going to be sent to HQ. During our project for modelling, I visualized the results we got from the lab in order to compare them with the expected results. I used MATLAB and Blender to further analyze and demonstrate our work. By this way, I learned how to use MATLAB for calculating and portraying the results. Furthermore, I helped writing the use of biology part of our parts. And, like all members I tried to construct some experiments on our teacher sight.

Mert Seçen Prototype chief, Drylab worker, HP helper, Interlab

My duties were, like everybody else’s were, diverse. As the project progressed, I figured my strengths and weaknesses out which helped me figure out how to unleash my full potential to help this team. I’m proud about the prototype the most; of which I believe I was able to be useful the most useful. While doing Human Practice work, I appeared on SEBIT, the interview, presentation and workshop; on the DNA day doing DNA extraction. Also, I’ve helped with drylab and interlab.

Tunç Ünal Wetlab worker, Drylab worker, HP helper, Interlab

As a team, we mainly worked together in all fields so that everyone can keep track of everything that was going on at that time but I can say that I played a great role in writing our project description, helped our project form to what it is now, by doing research and had a responsibility in most of our HP works such as SEBİT workshop, DNA Day Event and DNA extraction. I also helped in the Interlab process by reviewing the protocols and doing serial dilution. Furthermore, I was involved in planning our experiments regarding our project and protocols while executing some.

Laboratory, Technical and General Support

We would like to give a great special thanks to our supervisors:

Principal Investigator Tuğba İnanç for being there for us in every aspect of the project. She struggled even more than we did and turned out to be the “ligase” of the whole team. It is not enough to say how much we owe her. She gave us courses on synthetic biology and lab safety, helped us arrange our human practices by contacting so many people. She assisted us while coming up with the project idea and further developing it. She is the one who kept all this process going by providing the team a great support; without her this project wouldn’t come this far.

Secondary Investigator Dr. Ceyhun Kayıhan, for his general support and advice on the project and the laboratory. He became a part of our team and helped our principal investigator with providing the answers for our never-ending questions. He also has undeniable contributions in planning our lab work and initiating them.

We give a huge special thanks to Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Avni Öktem for opening the doors of his lab to us. He provided us the laboratory, his wisdom and supervised us about the process of our project. We appreciate him for giving us his insight our project topic and encouraging us to study and achieve our goals.

Ph. D. Student Dilan Akın for her assistance and guidance in the laboratory. She helped us understanding the lab rules and protocols.

Research Assistant Evrim Elçin for assisting and helping us doing our lab work. She made sure we were following the protocols and the lab safety rules accurately. Furthermore, she guided us and spared us her precious time from her busy schedule whenever we needed help in our Interlab Measurements.

Prof. Dr. Musa Doğan for sharing his experiences which provided us a broader view of the difficulties we may face and how to overcome them. His advices helped us to succeed with our project in means of human practices and public engagement.

Project, HP Support, Fundraising Help and Advice

We thank Dr. Figen Ar, for guiding us by showing where to start with our Human Practices. She helped arranging our interviews with the General Director of Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources Renewable Energy General Directory Oğuz Can, Deputy President of the Green Energy Foundation Tülin Keskin and our trip to Konya Integrated Facility. Also, we appreciate her for giving presentations on the growing significance of the use of bioethanol as a biofuel in today’s world, and answering our questions about bioetanol in general. With her assistance, we once more realized how significant and helpful our project could be and studied even harder to actualise it.

We thank Minister Advisor Oğuz Can for supporting us politically in our attempts to increase blend bioethanol percentage from %3 to %10 through laws. He welcomed us in the Ministry of Energy and Natural sources and shared his insights.

We would like to utter our gratitude to Prof. Dr. Saffettin Ferda Mutlu for providing us with the furfural that he uses for his research. He showed us a great help when we had problems with our orders.

Also we would like to thank Çukurova Kimya for providing us with the furfural we needed for our experiments.

We would like to thank SEBİT for helping us arrange our first workshop in which we reached out to children and introduced them the field of life sciences.

We also very much like to thank Kuntay Aktas for printing our prototype in 3D format for free and delivering it in only a few days.

Wiki and Logo Support

We, as a whole team decided the concept on our wiki and our team member Gamze handled the figuration on paper. In actualising those paper sketches and providing ideas for differing concepts, graphic designer Nedim Eskinazi helped us immensely. He helped us with the design of our wiki and transferred our ideas into the digital world. Also, he helped us with shooting the videos on our YouTube channel and suggested the best fit possible for every single time.

Computer Support

We give special thanks to Hasan Karaaslan for sparing some time to teach us programming and coding by using Python. He showed the basics for computing and taught the steps over and over again whenever we made mistakes. We owe him for the patience he has shown and making our coding lessons enjoyable.

Thanks and acknowledgements

We thank Dr. Emre Aksoy, for his presentation on soil, plants and crops. At the stage where we were trying to find a concept to follow, his presentation encouraged us to follow the way of crops.