Jonas Dauster

Field of study: Molecular Biotechnology B. Sc.

Age: 20

What depressed you the most during iGEM? How much Time has passed so quickly.

What was your iGEM highlight? Designing our first full protein.

Fun facts

Feeds only on gourmet salt sticks
Stretches the images while creating a meme

Paul Goffing

Field of study: Molecular Cell Biology M. Sc.

Age: 24

What depressed you the most during iGEM? When we lost the caps of our cryo tubes and some of our samples in the liquid nitrogen.

What was your iGEM highlight? Our visit at Alfred Krippendorf’s company. He gave us a deep insight into a world that was previously unknown to us.

Fun facts

likes to create way too many etherpads
Co-founder of the Chemicals aka the Camelcals

Matthes Haese

Field of study: Molecular Biotechnology B. Sc.

Age: 20

What depressed you the most during iGEM? When I noticed the GC/MS didn’t work for half the weekend and I had to worry about not finishing in time.

What was your iGEM highlight? When we visited Alfred Krippendorf and he talked with us pretty much the entire day.

Fun facts

Likes to breakfix things
Hydro Boy

Marvin Hildebrandt

Field of study: Genome Based Systems Biology M. Sc.

Age: 23

What depressed you the most during iGEM? Because of my studies I couldn't always invest as much time in iGEM as I would like.

What was your iGEM highlight? When we finally managed to generate receptors with an increased number of hydrogen bonds using Rosetta and when the output of the GC/MS metabolome experiment looked great.

Fun facts

Uses an extremely large amount of agrobacteria infiltration solution
systematically annihilates our stocks of cakes and biscuits

Mareike Keßler

Field of study: Interdisciplinary Biomedicine M. Sc.

Age: 24

What depressed you the most during iGEM? when PCR doesn’t work at all the first meeting in person with the team was a half year after the start of our project

What was your iGEM highlight? supportive and super friendly team intensive team writing sessions with a lot of fun

Fun facts

Looted a Knoppers factory
Considerably smaller in person

Lucas Krause

Field of study: Molecular Biotechnology M. Sc.

Age: 24

What depressed you the most during iGEM? The moment when, after excessive cloning efforts, the red colonies on the agar plate turned out to be a contamination instead of the construct we aimed to assemble with an RFP

What was your iGEM highlight? Learning new methods and techniques and getting the possibility of conducting measurements with interesting laboratory devices like CFSM or SPR to see if our work paid off.

Fun facts

Likes to take power naps in the lab
Would like to buy racing camels using the crowdfunding money

Tim Prasun

Field of study: Genome Based Systems Biology M. Sc.

Age: 24

What depressed you the most during iGEM? No visible fluorescence in mCRISPRed colonies for several weeks. Failing to PCR-amplify parts of the signaling cascade for months. After figuring out the conditions that worked, we ran into massive problems with the subsequent Gibson assembly.

What was your iGEM highlight? When I told the team that we had a working bacterial signaling cascade Visible fluorescence after purification of mCRISPRed Visible fluorescence as putative output of the signaling cascade

Fun facts

Puts in night shifts in the lab
Has developed the fine art of microwave autoclaving

Louisa Lehmann

Field of study: Molecular Biotechnology B. Sc.

Age: 22

What depressed you the most during iGEM? The many Gibson assemblies with four fragments for our signal cascade in tobacco and the morning after the transformation when it turned out that they didn't work again. Also the contaminated water we used for the Colony PCR of hundreds of clones (details in Julia's text).

What was your iGEM highlight? The fact that the team always picked itself up again after every setback and developed a new plan together, resulting in the goals that we achieved.

Fun facts

Drives way too fast
Maximum PowerPoint skills

Lennart Lutz

Field of study: Molecular Biotechnology B.Sc.

Age: 21

What depressed you the most during iGEM? I was depressed by only having online meetings the first half of the year. Planning our research in person is way more fun. The most frustrating experience was actually outside of the lab when I had to be identified as the owner of my bank account for our crowdfunding. I was sent from bank to bank and no bank was able to identify me officially.

What was your iGEM highlight? In my year of iGEM i had many highlights. One was when I finally uploaded our finished promo video I was quite pleased with, considering our lack of filming and editing experience. Another highlight was the entire workflow of designing a receptor in silico, it was really cool to see a more affine receptor-ligand interaction with each design run. Further every success in the lab was quite satisfying, e. g. when after weeks of trying the fluorescence-protein mCRISPRed was finally visible or we finally found evidence of our signaling cascade.

Fun facts

Le German Snack ;D
Has a sleeping bag with active cooling for whatever purpose

Julia Macholl

Field of study: Molecular Cell Biology M. Sc.

Age: 23

What depressed you the most during iGEM? Colony PCRs that didn’t work out at all. So, we spent 2 days preparing and screening hundreds of clones and in the end the water was contaminated and all the bands on the gel were exactly the same.

What was your iGEM highlight? When the agroinfiltration worked for the first time and our tobacco leaves turned bright red. Also, the visit at Alfred Krippendorf’s company. It was pretty cool there.

Fun facts

Chief of Agroinfiltration
Created the super cute Nicis

Jacob Sarx

Field of study: Molecular Biotechnology B. Sc.

Age: 22

What depressed you the most during iGEM? Finding out that “In iGEM you’re in the lab from morning till night” wasn’t a joke. Not having vacation or free time. Repeating stuff until it works

What was your iGEM highlight? Finding out that “In iGEM you’re in the lab from morning till night” wasn’t a joke. The successful detection of BTCA and MPA in the CG/MS after days of work and with the threatening deadline in mind.

Fun facts

Likes to get feedback quickly
Calculates everything via density

Marie Schmiedekamp

Field of study: Biology B. Sc.

Age: 27

What depressed you the most during iGEM? When we tried to order stickers for our crowdfunding and the staff member wouldn‘t answer our questions about the format even for the fifth time, although contradictory details were given on their website, and just left the chat. Also, the endless minipreps and restriction digestion to check the transformands because the ColonyPCRs didn't work. One should know that we did not have an attachment for 15 mL tubes for the centrifuge in this lab and therefore had to centrifuge four times in 1.5 mL tubes.

What was your iGEM highlight? The moment after RUBY1 and RUBY2 failed to assemble, when I - out of sheer desperation – had to do a PCR for an amplicon of about 13700 pb and it worked. Even after verification by restriction and sequencing it was still right.

Fun facts

Trusts the culinary taste of Lennart (huge mistake)
Merciless human resource manager

Johnny Le

Field of study: Molecular Biotechnology B. Sc.

Age: 21

What depressed you the most during iGEM? The lack of time.

What was your iGEM highlight? Having a supportive and sympathetic team.

Fun facts

Always calls us "boys"
Is bigger in person

Laura Schlüter

Supervisor

PhD student in the research group Microbial Genomics and Biotechnology

Dr. Christian Rückert

PI

Senior Research Scientist in the research group Microbial Genomics and Biotechnology and the Technology Platform Genomics

Prof. Dr. Jörn Kalinowski

PI

Head of the research group Microbial Genomics and Biotechnology and the Technology Platform Genomics

Team:Bielefeld-CeBiTec/Team