Team:Aachen/Attributions
Mentors
Prof. Dr. Lars Blank
Institute for Applied Microbiology, RWTH Aachen University
Professor Blank, head of the Institute of Applied Microbiology (iAMB), has been primary PI for the iGEM Teams from RWTH Aachen University since 2014. He helped us evaluate our project ideas and encouraged us to choose an unconventional futuristic subject for our research. He casually gave us an idea that changed the whole concept for our hardware and immobilization plans and proved to be brilliant because of its simplicity. By providing lab space and helping us acquire funding, he enabled us to realize our project. We want to thank him for his feedback and ideas, which have made our project what it is.
Prof. Dr. Ulrich Schwaneberg
Institute for Biotechnology, RWTH Aachen University
As head of the Institute of Biotechnology, Professor Schwaneberg not only provided us with lab space and supplies, he also introduced us to members of his team who could help us with certain issues. Furthermore, he helped us find a great instructor, Dr. Alexander Boes, who supported us through our daily lab routine. Professor Schwaneberg's expertise in adhesion peptides inspired us to try new and innovative immobilization systems, and we had the unique opportunity to try them at the Leibniz Institute for Interactive Materials (DWI). We are grateful for his commitment and advice.
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Wiechert
Institute for Biotechnology, FZ Jülich
Professor Wiechert is the head of Systems Biotechnology (IBG-1) at the FZ Jülich. In addition to providing fundraising assistance for all Aachen iGEM Teams, his constructive criticism helped us switch our focus from what we dreamed of doing to what we could realistically achieve. Especially in the finding phase, this was very important for our project selection process because his advice always gave us a clear picture of possibilities. He also guided our modeling team to find the right questions to investigate. We want to thank him for his brutal honesty and for keeping us grounded when we needed it most.
Dr. Alexander Boes
Leibniz Institute for Interactive Materials, RWTH Aachen University
Alex was the best instructor we could have wished for. He really made an effort to immerse himself in the unconventional topic of DNA synthesis and helped us perform our immobilization experiments in the DWI lab. We met weekly to discuss lab results and troubleshoot, exchanging ideas and finding solutions. Guiding us on our way, he remained relaxed when problems arose, and gave advice when we did not know what to do next. We are grateful for his dedication to our team and we would not have come this far without him.
Team Members
Viktor Doychev
With his creativity and skills in design programs, Viktor helped whenever visualizations were needed. The best example is our team logo, which he designed. He also created the social media layout and visualized our enzyme in a short video. With his passion for photography, Viktor was shooting all team photos. He was responsible for contacting possible sponsors to finance the project. To implement his social skills, Viktor did lots of science communication by educating students in Germany and Bulgaria on synthetic biology. He also went to Greece for a project on this topic and surveyed the public image of GMOs together with iGEM Team Maastricht.
Alina Frank
Alina was part of the fundraising team, which included establishing contact with foundations and potential industrial partners as well as planning the funding of the project. She also supported the wet lab team by spending time in the laboratory performing and planning experiments as well as analyzing the generated results.
Anna Maria Haut
Anna Maria was part of the subgroups organization, laboratory and social media. Her task was to support Marie L. in managing the team, organizing meetings, and keeping an eye on deadlines and email traffic. Since Anna Maria worked from home most of the time, she took over few lab shifts, but was heavily involved in research and could contribute her ideas in meetings. For social media, she created posts and took care of the exchange with other iGEM teams.
Tobias Jülich
Tobias contributed especially in the first part of the project to the search for possible topics. Therefore, he did a lot of research on the current state of the art and problems in enzymatic DNA synthesis. Tobias came up with ideas for solutions to these. In the modeling team, he achieved first progress by modeling the TdT reaction, which gave important insights into the reaction principle. He also contributed to the Presentation Video by working on the script.
Kim Keilen
Kim was the creative mind of our team. From start to finish, she always ensured that everything involving design turned out to be top-notch, whether it was presentations, social media, or our wiki. Additionally, she took part in planning most of our science communication and human practices events. To summarize, she always put a lot of effort into representing us professionally to the public. However, she still was majorly invested into our laboratory group through research, experimental planning, and practical work.
Marie Kolvenbach
Marie started the project by being part of the fundraising team, which included initiating contact with companies and organizations, ongoing communication, and managing the teams' finances. She was involved in all things regarding design and creativity, e.g. logo- and wiki-design, science communication, and video conceptualization. However, her main focus was bringing the project forward in the wet lab by spending countless hours in the laboratory and experimental planning.
Clemens Köhler
Clemens used his expertise in computer science to contribute to the DNA-encoding, a key part of our project. Furthermore, he worked as part of the IT and Wiki team, without which this wiki would not have been possible. But Clemens did not only work on IT-related topics; by participating in an exchange program in Greece, he spread the word about iGEM and science in general and contributed his creativity to communicate science in alternative ways. Additionally, his knowledge of design-related topics helped the design team with its work.
Hannah König
Hannah was the treasurer of the iGEM Aachen association. She managed the team's finances and also helped with general fundraising. As a part of the human practices team, she put a lot of effort into science communication projects like the online escape room collaboration with other German iGEM Teams and the DNA extraction kits for students. Additionally, she has contributed a significant part in the presentation video organization and eagerly supported the team in the wet lab whenever help was needed.
Dominic Kösters
Dominic managed the lab organization and always made sure that people got things done. Planning and performing experiments, he also spent a lot of time in the lab himself and came up with a standardized format for protocols as well as an inventory. He was very invested in planning the promotion and presentation video and contributed to various design-related projects such as postcards, presentations, and our wiki. Furthermore, his ideas for structuring and writing the wiki plus checking all texts for mistakes made it something we can be proud of.
Marie Laufens
Marie was our team leader and the mastermind behind the organization of our project. She managed to keep every important deadline and detail on her radar, schedule meetings, prepare agendas, hold presentations, and communicate with our mentors and experts. Apart from the organization, she took a major part in the wet lab through experimental planning and practical work and was involved in the production of our promotion and presentation video. As Marie's organizational work required a basic understanding of the progress in each sub-group, she significantly contributed to the planning, designing, and writing of our wiki. It would probably be easier to list the few things she was not involved in.
Daniel Mehling
Daniel's function in the iGEM team was more of a background organization. For example, Daniel designed the schedule and implementation of the promotion video, took care of ordering the laboratory reagents, designing different primers, or establishing new methods (different PCR approaches, cloning strategies, staining reagents). In the lab, Daniel dealt exclusively with the topic of 'SSBs' and whether they were useful for our project.
Amir Mirmoini
As an engineer Amir could provide useful insight for the hardware and modeling subgroup because those are his main area of expertise. Especially in terms of modeling, he could help to construct a dynamic model, implement it and evaluate the simulative data with the help of the experimental results.
Matthias Monissen
Matthias was really invested in the team communication to the public. For that he wrote an article about our project in the magazine BIOspektrum and represented our team in a podcast. His other main focus was the modeling of our reactions. In the modeling subgroup, he planned and coded the model simulating the reaction network.
Willy Mroczowski
Willy contributed to both the IT as well as to the Hardware subgroup. He played a substantial part in the topic selection process, and later, he did an in-depth research on unnatural base parings. Furthermore, he was responsible for structuring the hardware by designing it as well as assembling and programming the electronics behind it
Polina Ries
Polina was the subgroup leader of the human practices team and a member of the story subgroup. She pursued many important tasks like managing the communication with experts, writing the story script for our presentation video, planning meetings, and overviewing of all human practices projects. Furthermore, Polina was a key participant of the wet lab team and spent many hours experimenting and implementing her own ideas, which significantly brought the project forward.
Marijke Rudolph
Marijke started the project by searching for great ideas to promote synthetic biology and other iGEM Teams to collaborate. She was an important part of our Human Practices Team and coordinated our Collaborations with iGEM Eindhoven and Maastricht. She helped with a lot of other little collaborations, too. In addition to that, she was part of organizing and performing our educational DNA extraction experiment in schools and at the welcome week. She was also part of the Hardware Team and had some ideas on how to build and optimize the hardware.
Malte Schwerin
As a Computer Science student, Malte mainly focused on the wiki and software. He set up our wiki, customized it to our needs, and was heavily involved in its design. He also helped other team members work with GitHub to make the whole writing process as seamless as possible. In addition, Malte developed our software tool for encoding and decoding information in DNA. As support in the lab, he helped analyze the data generated with nanopore sequencing. Malte also supervised the graphic design team, so he was involved in all kinds of creative decisions. This included creating our logos and color scheme, social media posts, and especially the design of our wiki. Besides that, he appeared in both our promotion video and presentation video as a speaker and also helped write the script for the former.
Alina Stefanowski
Alina was part of the laboratory subgroup and contributed significantly to the team, for example, by creating one of the first successful experiments. As a member of the Human Practices subgroup, she would ambitiously text the expert's assistants, so that we could schedule a meeting with them. In the storytelling subgroup, she would give her creativity free rein and come up with the most impressive ideas. Conclusively, Alina was both a cheerful person and an engaged and determined team member.
Zeynep Türkyilmaz
Zeynep was greatly involved in our Human Practices Teams by coordinating the collab with iGEM Eindhoven, promoting iGEM, synthetic Biology, and our project to international students. She organized and performed our educational DNA extraction experiment. She also introduced our project to experts in data storage and had lively discussions about the future of data storage with them. As part of the design team, she always gave great input to our talented designers and gained first experience. In addition, she also helped in the lab.
Theresia Vu
Theresia started the project by being part of the (Integrated) Human Practices Team. She helped with the collaborations and supported the other team members. Furthermore, she was part of the Fundraising Team, which included initiating contact with companies and organizations.
Martin Zens
Martin started in the Fundraising team by contacting and presenting our team to companies and foundations to gain financial support. Furthermore, he took care of legal and organizational questions concerning our funding. As part of the laboratory team, he performed weekly experiments, got in contact with experts to solve technical challenges, and managed material orders. With the generated data in the lab, Martin helped to establish a kinetic model and worked on molecular illustrations and animations.
Experts
Steven Benner, Ph.D.
The Westheimer Institute of Science and Technology (ret.)
It was an honor for us to meet Professor Benner, who is such an important person in the field of synthetic biology. He was interested in and optimistic about our ideas and particularly helped us assess the use of unnatural base pairs in our project. We are grateful he took the time to meet with us and gave us new perspectives.
George Church, Ph.D.
Wyss Institute, Harvard University
Professor Church is the inspiration for our project. Our ideas are based on his research, and we are honored that he agreed to meet with us. He helped us with various aspects of our project and gave us unique input for our storytelling. We want to thank him for his feedback, new perspectives, and an unforgettable meeting.
Prof. Dr. Alexander Heckel
Goethe-University Frankfurt
Professor Heckel helped us with his expertise about photolabile protecting groups and even offered to provide us with photolabile protected bases. As our project moved in a different direction, we were not able to use this unique opportunity, however, we are extremely grateful for it.
Prof. Dr. Jörn Kalinowski, Dr. Christian Rückert
Center for Biotechnology, University Bielefeld
Professor Kalinowski and Dr. Rückert explained the principles of nanopore sequencing and pointed out difficulties we could be facing. We greatly appreciate their time and input.
Dr. Florian Kraft
Uniklinikum Aachen
Dr. Kraft helped us understand nanopore sequencing and advised us on how to prepare our samples. He also sequenced some samples for us. We want to thank him for providing us with the results for our proof of concept.
Dr. Jost Muth, Lena Julie Freund
Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology
Dr. Muth and Mrs. Freund were our contacts for the capillary electrophoresis at the Fraunhofer IME in Aachen and kindly analyzed some samples for us. Furthermore, they tried to answer all our questions and helped us with troubleshooting for our very unconventional samples. We are thankful for their commitment.
Dr. Sebastian Palluk
Ansa Biotechnologies
Sebastian is an expert in DNA synthesis with TdT and participated in the iGEM competition himself. He gave some excellent advice about the implementation of our experiments and shared his experience with first tries and failures with this topic. We want to thank him for his time, his input, and his encouragement.
Prof. Dr. Dörte Rother, Dr. Torsten Sehl, Jan-Dirk Spöring
Institute for Biotechnology, FZ Jülich
Professor Rother and her team are experts in enzyme immobilization systems and helped us consider which system could work for our project. We are thankful for their time and input.
Prof. Dr. Elmar Weinhold
Institute of Organic Chemistry, RWTH Aachen University
Professor Weinhold is an expert in nucleotide chemistry. He helped us understand the theory of DNA synthesis and discuss the feasibility of our experiments on several occasions. We want to thank him for his enthusiasm that motivated us.
Dr. Martin Zimmermann
Institute for Applied Microbiology, RWTH Aachen University
Dr. Zimmermann has long-standing experience with working in the lab and particularly helped us find the right conditions for a denaturing PAGE for our unconventional samples. Furthermore, he encouraged us to assess the health risks associated with the applied methods. We are thankful for his advice, especially concerning the things that are too often neglected.
Lab Support
Dr. Hendrik Ballerstedt
Institute for Applied Microbiology, RWTH Aachen University
Hendrik gave us the safety introduction for the S1 lab in the Institute of Applied Microbiology and showed us the lab. He helped us find the right person for our questions on several occasions and gave us access to the lab for our promotion video shoot. We want to thank him for being there for us.
Marian Bienstein
Institute for Biotechnology, RWTH Aachen University
Marian spontaneously gave us an introduction to the S1 lab in the Institute of Biotechnology and took his time to answer all our beginner's questions and assist us with our first attempts at gel electrophoresis. Furthermore, he provided us with a PCR mastermix and loading dye when we had not mastered the timing with our ordering process. We are grateful for his help in getting started in the lab.
Isabell Hofmann
Institute for Biotechnology, RWTH Aachen University
Isabell provided us with our first TdT reaction primers before we were able to design primers ourselves. She always answered our questions and helped us find our way in the lab. We are grateful for her time and patience.
Ursula Holter
Institute for Biotechnology, RWTH Aachen University
Ursula made our time at the Institute of Biotechnology enjoyable. We could laugh about the everyday lab failures with her, which brightened our mood, and saved us from desperation. She would always take the time to troubleshoot with us and we could ask her anything. We want to thank her for reminding us that such problems and failures are normal and no reason for giving up.
Kalle Hüser
Institute for Applied Microbiology, RWTH Aachen University
Kalle assisted us on several occasions we worked in the Institute of Applied Microbiology. He showed us the lab equipment, and we could always ask for help. We want to thank him for being there for us.
Yi Lu
Institute for Biotechnology, RWTH Aachen University
Yi provided us with M13 primers for our cloning experiment on short notice and thus saved us some time. Thank you!
Maximilian Schmidt
Institute for Bioinformatics, FZ Jülich
Maximilian is a nanopore sequencing expert and gave us the unique possibility to try sequencing a sample with one of his MinIONs. He even came to our lab to guide us through the whole process. We want to thank him for his time and patience.
Christian Simons
Institute for Biotechnology, RWTH Aachen University
Christian gave us the safety introduction for the S1 lab in the Institute of Biotechnology. He also helped us at short notice with getting access to the lab for our promotion video shoot.
All other lab members
Institute for Applied Microbiology, Institute for Biotechnology, RWTH Aachen University
We want to thank everyone for welcoming us and helping us find our way in the lab.
Project Support
Julia Gehrmann
iGEM Team Aachen 2020
Julia introduced us to the world of iGEM and managed the transition from the 2020 to the 2021 team. She was always the first person we approached for questions about the competition or general issues. We want to thank her for taking the time to share her experience with us.
Dr. Antje Gent
Promega GmbH
As our contact person from Promega, she gave us advice and proposed products to improve our project and solve some technical problems. We want to thank Dr. Gent for her competent advice and support.
Theresa Heckenbücker, Bernd Seibert
Kölner Jugendwerkzentrum
Theresa and Bernd provided us materials and tools to complete the hardware and gave us tips on how to build it. We want to thank them for their help and assistance.
Lina Schmidt
iGEM Team Aachen 2020
Lina was always there to help us with fundraising or lab issues, such as managing the ordering process and finding the right providers for laboratory requirements. We are grateful for her kindness and advice.
Annette Schreer
Institute for Applied Microbiology, RWTH Aachen University
Annette managed all our arriving packages and took care of them until we were able to collect them. She helped us find lost parcels and gave us some nucleotides to get started with our experiments. We want to thank her for being so helpful and considerate.
Marcel Wittmund
iGEM Team Aachen 2020
Marcel helped us getting started with Microsoft Teams and gave us an introduction to some modeling tools. We are grateful for his assistance.
Fundraising Support
Manja Kropp, Dr. Helen Rosenkranz
Institute for Applied Microbiology, RWTH Aachen University
Ms. Kropp and Dr. Rosenkranz were our contact persons concerning legal issues and fundraising questions. Furthermore, they managed our university bank account. We want to thank them for their time and good advice.
Jeanette Schwerdt
proRWTH e.V.
We want to thank Jeannette Schwerdt as the contact person to proRWTH - the sponsoring association of RWTH Aachen University - for her help with fundraising and good communication.
Dr. Carin Jansen
Profile Area Molecular Science & Engineering (MSE), RWTH Aachen University
Dr. Jansen was our contact from the profile area Molecular Science & Engineering (MSE). It was her first time managing the sponsorship with the iGEM team, and she did an excellent job, being very helpful and courteous. We want to thank her for her commitment.
Special Thanks
Luis Budow
on behalf of IMAVIO
Luis produced our presentation video. He had very little time and still managed to implement our ideas. We want to thank him for his commitment.
Collective Incubator
In times of the Covid-19 pandemic it was very hard for our team members to meet in person, especially because the university was closed, and we could not use the seminar rooms. Therefore, we are very thankful for the possibility to use the meeting rooms of the Collective Incubator. Working together was much easier and we made a lot of progress in those meetings.
Nicole Eßmajor, Dr. Nursen Sözer
Institute for Biotechnology, RWTH Aachen University
Ms. Eßmajor and Dr. Sözer were our contact persons for everything not lab-related in the Institute of Biotechnology, e.g. helping us schedule meetings with Prof. Schwaneberg. We want to thank them for their assistance.
Daniel Knoll, Simon Orth
Knoll Media UG
Daniel and Simon produced our wonderful promotion video. They taught us amateurs how to look good on camera and were very patient, putting a lot of time and energy into the final touches. We had a lot of fun with the video shoot and are grateful for their support.
Chiara Nenninger
Institute for Biotechnology, RWTH Aachen University
Chiara helped us access the lab for our promotion video shoot. She was working on the weekend we filmed and kindly opened the door for us. Without her, we would not have been able to have a scene take place inside the Institute of Biotechnology. Thank you!
Carl Siemann
Carl helped us with our hardware design process by providing insights into the engineering design cycle, helping us understand and use CAD-Software and also tinkered with us on the 3D model until late in the night. Thank you!
Nicole Tabaka, Hannah Reichel
Institute for Applied Microbiology, RWTH Aachen University
In times with limited working space, Nicole and Hannah kindly proposed to share their lab space with us, which enabled us to perform some experiments in the Institute of Applied Microbiology. We are very grateful for that.
iGEM Team BITSPilani-Goa 2020
We want to thank the iGEM Team BITSPilani-Goa for creating the iGEM WikiSync and Wiki Starter Pack, which facilitated the development of our wiki significantly.
All Members of the iGEM Team Aachen 2020
We want to thank all members of the iGEM Team Aachen 2020 for introducing us to the competition, giving helpful advice, and answering all our questions.