Project Attribution

We are the first iGEM team in Hebrew University's history. One year ago, when we had only thought of joining iGEM, the students and administrators of our university had not even heard of the conference. But as the word spread and momentum had been building with our committed team-members, the entirety of our project was being built from the bottom up. Before even finding a PI, our small group of 2nd and 3rd year undergrad students had begun developing research ideas, recruiting new-members, searching for funding and establishing the parameters of what it would take to actually compete at iGEM.

We've made mistakes along the way, perhaps many. As the first iGEM team to have been established at our university, we met challenges that, we hope, will be stream-lined for future teams at Hebrew U.

Founding staff members

Despite our team-members stubborn commitment to trailblazing this enterprise, we could not have accomplished an ounce of it without some key administrators and advisors from our school: Thank you,

Dr. Assaf Mosquna
Prof. Masha Niv (V. Dean of the Agriculture Faculty)
Prof. Berta Sivan (V. Rector of the University)
Prof. Benny Chefetz (Dean of the Agriculture Faculty)
Prof. Shai Morin (V. Dean of the Agriculture Faculty)
Tatyana Grosfeld (Head of Student Union in the Agriculture Faculty)

for helping us obtain the means to build and complete our project.

Mentors

Aside from our beloved PI, Assaf Mosquna, whom graciously dedicated countless hours to helping us with every step along the way, we had found other mentors from within the administration and staff of our university that did not hesitate to offer their time, guidance and administrative help to our team. All of our mentors helped us shape our project into a tangible and realistic form. They made sure that our youthful imaginations had something to stand on.

Prof. Berta Sivan
Prof. Masha Niv
Mr. Shai Ducin
Mr. Oded Pri-Tal
Mr. Gil Zimran

We'd also like to thank Almog Angel (iGEM Tel-Hai 2016) and Ricarina Rabinovitz (iGEM Technion 2014) for their indispensable advice and guidance in the beginning of our journey.

Experts support

Over the course of the year, several individuals stand out as having played a key role in the undertaking of some of our core projects. Without them, we could not have achieved the multi-dimensional operations and acts we had sought to achieve and are grateful to have met and worked with such professionals.
Thank you,

Prof. Ron Milo (Weizmann Institute of Science)
Prof. Boaz Yuval (The Hebrew University)
Prof. Oded Shuseyov (The Hebrew University)
Ms. Hoan Xu
Mr. Tomer Malchi

for their consultation and guidance throughout our project.

Dr. Yonatan Friedman (The Hebrew University) for giving us access for his lab equipment during our interlab work.

Dr. Julius Ben Ari, Mr. Noam Kirshenbaum and Dr. Orit gal (The Hebrew University). for their help with our chemical analyses.

Dr. Dan Davidi (Weizmann Institute of Science) for advisement on our Codon Optimizer software.

Prof. Jonathan Gressel (Weizmann Institute of Science), for participating in our Livestream.

Dr. Yair Rezeck (Tel Hai Collegue)
Sheikh Hasan Heidar
Prof. Eliezer Goldschmidt (The Hebrew University
Dr Carmel Shalev (Haifa University)
Ms. Siba Ismail

for meeting with us and providing religious and cultural insights regarding our Human Practices work.

Asaf Magal and Shahar Frenkel, for translating an interview (from arabic).
Dr. Charles Bailey and Dr. Le Ke son, authors of "From Enemies to Partners" and Dr. Mai Trinh for their priceless consultations as experts on the TCDD tragedy in Vietnam.
Eyal Shushan and Yuli Meroz, industrial designers from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, for helping design and execute our community projects.
Prof. Nir Friedman (The Hebrew University) for his gracious donations to our community projects.
Prof. Maya Schuldiner lab (Weizmann Institute) for providing us plasmids and yeast for our experiments.

Associated Students

Throughout our iGEM journey, several students from our university helped. These students supported us along the way and provided a helping hand for some of our key activities. We greatly appreciate their contribution to the project:

Hasan Haidar, Plant science, Bachelor's degree, 3rd year.
Sivan Samara, Environmental economics, Bachelor's degree, first year.
Shai Eyal, Biochemistry and Food Science, Bachelor's degree, third year.
Yaarit Shapira, agroecology & biotechnology, Bachelor's degree, second year.
Omri Vardi, Agroecology & Biotechnology, Bachelor's degree, second year.
Dania Odeh, Computational Biology, Bachelor's degree, second year.
Amit Cucuy, Plant science, Bachelor's degree, 2nd year.

Creative proccesses guidnace

Many of the operations we had performed throughout the year did not necessarily come to fruition. Nevertheless, many hours were poured into them by our team as well as several experts we had consulted with. We would like to acknowledge and thank those people for their contribution during the creative processes of our projects.

Prof. Sarel Fleishman (Weizmann Institute of Science)

Dr. Antollena Di Pizio (The Hebrew University)

Ms. Rosalie Lipsh (Weizmann Institute of Science)

on looking into the possibility of improving one of our enzymes using computational design.

Dr. Yair Mau and Dr. Nimrod Schwartz (The Hebrew University) - making a plant uptake calculator.
Prof. Yakov Nahmias (The Hebrew University) - TCDD breakage from contaminated liver cells.
Barak Dror (The Hebrew University),
Ms. Michal chomsky (Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd),
Ms. Yael Givol-Barzilai,
Dr. Orit gal – supporting our effort to generate industry sponsorship,
Ms. Naomi van Wijk and Dr. Shlomzion Shen, from Seevix, for giving us access to their patented Spider-silk products,
Maayan Tzuk-Peri (Coordinator External Relations, Agriculture Faculty)

Our team participated in several international conferences such as Biomed, Agrivest and a Synthetic Biology conference at the Weizmann Institute, in which we presented our project and had productive dialogues with many professionals about our ideas. We also visited the offices of several major corporations (Microsoft, Teva LTD., etc.) in order to receive their input on our implementation ideas as well.

In speaking with these business leaders - some of which have actually brought GMO's to market, and others with a deep understanding of Agro-tech product development - we came to understand that a solution such as ours has the potential to reach the market, but that, if it did, the product would not necessarily reach the regions of the world that need it the most. For this reason, our team dropped the idea of creating a business model, and instead adopted an open-source model so that our solution would not be restricted from any particular country or region.