Team student members, advisors, instructors, and PIs
Isaac Larkin - Student co-lead, Wetware co-lead, Software, Hardware, Fundraising.
Harini Sudha - Student co-lead, Wiki lead, Sci Comm, Social Media and Creative Design.
Ahmed Hussain - Student co-lead, Wetware, Wiki/Doc, Sci Comm, Gofundme, collaborations.
Almiro Neto - Software, Wiki/Doc (developing Wiki), Wetware co-lead.
Giovanna Maklouf - Human Practices lead, Software, Wiki.
Isaac Guerreiro - Software lead, Wiki.
Luiza Hesketh - Wiki/Doc (developing Wiki), Sci Comm, Video/presentations, Social Media, Human Practices.
Jeremy Cahill - Wiki/Doc (developing Wiki), Software.
Diego Muñoz - Fundraising co-lead. Also designed and built the bioreactor.
Prince Samoh - Hardware co-lead.
Vivek Raja - Software member.
Gargi Gargi - Social media co-lead, Sci Comm, Collaborations.
Sana Jalili - Collaborations co-lead, Wiki/Doc.
Anish Iyyavoo - Special Media, Wetlab access, learning wetware/software.
Laura Dale - Wiki/Doc.
Scott Pownall - PI, access to a wetlab, lab supervision.
Sarah Ware - Co-PI, access to a wetlab, lab supervision.
Harry Akligoh - Co-PI, access to a wetlab, lab supervision.
Lyre Munroe - Co-PI.
Yan-Kay Ho - Project management mentor; Wiki/Doc, Sci Comm and Human Practices advisor.
Kahlil Corazo - Project management, collaborations, entrepreneurship, providing subscriptions (for Zoom, Roam).
Keoni Gandall - Wetware and Software advisor.
Staff and students who worked with Sarah Ware at BioBlaze
Michael Valipour - BioBlaze staff
Stanley Chen - BioBlaze staff
Claudia L Andrews - Student
Britney Morales - Student
Shravan Arun - Student
Guadalupe Garcia - Student
Many kind thanks for our sponsors
Jenny Molloy - provided sponsorship for the team to register for iGEM 2021.
Lee Redden - provided sponsorship for the team to register for iGEM 2021.
Scot Bryson - provided sponsorship for the team to register for iGEM 2021.
Andrew Hessel - provided sponsorship for the team to register for iGEM 2021.
Open Science Network Society - sponsorship for lab reagents, consumables, and space to run our wetware experiments.
Just One Giant Lab (JOGL, specific people) - sponsorship to purchase lab reagents, and support to co-host Hackathon.
OpenTrons (specific people) - sponsoring the team and by providing four OT2 and lab consumables for the four labs in Vancouver, Chicago, Kumasi, and Philippines.
Kind donations gathered on our Go Fund Me: Friendzymes collection.
Our project idea was a brain child of Isaac Larkin and the seed of the team was formed during the Manu Prakash’s Frugal Science class that some of us attended in late 2020. We were amidst the pandemic and felt the need to solve problems that could ease others to solve real world problems. We’ve mentioned in more detail about the story of our project in Human Practices.
The iGEM team was formed and registered in June 2021. We organised ourselves in a virtual space and welcomed everyone’s idea of what it meant to democratise biotechnology. From the Frugal Science class, we did have some ideas that we can make happen during the iGEM season and we started testing the feasibility of each of our community labs to contribute to different aspects of our project. We saw that The Vancouver lab and BioBlaze would be able to make the wetware built happen, while the hardware manifestation was left to the Philippines and Ghana labs. The philippines lab were limited in resources and hence were only able to contribute to entrepreneurship and other aspects of the project that didn’t need physical presence. The Ghana lab along with BioBlaze were able to make most of our hardware prototypes. Yes! It was difficult to organise a whole project online but at the time of this writing two of the strongest suits of our project is Software that we developed and Human Practices that we incorporated in every aspect of the project.
We have 3 team leads - Ahmed Hussain from Vancouver, Canada, Harini Sudha from Pune, India and Isaac Larkin from Chicago, USA for our project due to the volume of our team members and their variable timezones. They managed the smooth functioning of different parts of the project and bridged communication between the team members. Ahmed made sure that different areas of our team efficiently functioned by involving himself in tasks wherever and whenever there was a necessity. Harini ensured that as the team grew with newer members, she communicated the goals and broad picture and made sure that people felt welcomed in the Friendzymes team (and community). It was Isaac L’s vision to democratize enzyme manufacturing which we adapted to be our project topic for iGEM 2021. He was on top of all the nitty-gritty details of our project and drove us towards a shared vision.
We would like to thank our instructor Kahlil Corazo, a project manager by profession, for training us to efficiently execute project ideas through the principles used in project management. It was not limited to just the team leads, but everyone who was interested in learning these principles. It was crucial since our project had different interacting components and we could have easily gotten lost in their entanglement. He helped us have a vision for the entrepreneurship side of our project which will enable us to be self-sustainable when we pursue the project after iGEM.
Our other instructor, Yan-Kay Ho, was pivotal in our project to keep us on track of our deadlines and medal criteria. She also provided us insights into best practices that previous iGEM teams followed, provided some advice during our wetware design sessions, gave guidance over science communication and wiki documentation, and helped us organise our workflow throughout the iGEM season.
Keoni Gandall is a master of many aspects in SynBio. In our team, he helped and advised on the wetware design and software fronts.
We have 4 PIs who are running the 4 different community labs that our project comprises of:
Scott Pownall is registered as our primary PI and was responsible for overseeing the wet lab benchwork in the Open Science Network Community lab in Vancouver, Canada. He also provided advice during our wetware design sessions to develop the given his experience in the Open Yeast Collection, and with the Open Insulin Project.
Sarah Ware is also registered as one of our secondary PIs and leads the BioBlaze Community lab in Chicago, USA, and supervised BioBlaze team members in performing wetlab benchwork experiments, and hardware design-build-test.
Harry Sefoga Akligoh is registered as one of our secondary PI and oversaw the hardware work done in the Hive Bio Lab in Kumasi, Ghana.
Lyre Munroe is registered as one of our secondary PIs and was important to look after the Philippine Genome Centre (PGC). Most of our entrepreneurship work stems from the members of the PGC.
We decided to have subteams to achieve different parts of our projects. Members of our team joined subgroups that they thought they would be useful the most in as well as subgroups they wanted to learn and help. Many of our team members were involved in different subteams and shared overlapping responsibilities. So, during this iGEM season we learnt from each other towards a common project goal.
Wetware design subteam
The activity of this subteam formed the building blocks of our project and their work started off in the very beginning. They designed genetic constructs that you can see in parts collection page.
- Isaac Larkin;
- Ahmed ;
- Almiro Neto;
- Isaac Guerreiro;
- Scott Pownell;
- Keoni Gandall;
- Yan-Kay Ho;
Wetware build subteam
- Ahmed
- All bioblaze team members.
Hardware subteam
- Diego Muñoz
- Prince - support for hardware;
- All bioblaze team members - plate reader, David Ischee’s bioreactor, chromatographic column.
Human practices subteam
- Giovanna - Organizing, planning, and executing our human practices efforts;
- Luiza - Support for Hackathon and Education;
- Laura - Support for Integrated Human Practices.
Wiki content
- Harini - Oversaw the overall wiki making. In charge documenting: Project Description, Implementation, Proof-of-Concept, support for Entrepreneurship documentation, Attributions, Contributions, and Front page content;
- Giovanna - Integrated Human Practices, Main Page of Human Practices, Software, Engineering Success, Proof-of-Concept, and Education pages;
- Ahmed - Wetware, Parts Registry, Collaborations;
- Laura - Attributions, Education, Inclusivity and Diversity pages;
- Diego - Hardware page.
Wiki design, Coding and Content
- Almiro - In charge of wiki code development and design, Documenting Safety, Parts Registry pages;
- Luiza - Developing the wiki workflow and wiki design, documenting the main page of the Human Practices, and Education pages;
- Isaac G - Wiki code development; documenting Software, Engineering Success, and Proof-of-Concept pages;
- Jeremy- Wiki code development, proofing content
- Yan-Kay - Wiki code development, proofing and editing content; documenting Collaborations, Attributions, Contributions.
Fundraising subteam
- Isaac L - connections with VC and set up meetings;
- Diego - Gofundme page management;
- Ahmed - Set up Gofundme page.
Creative design subteam
- Gargi - Design for all social media posts;
- Harini - Overseeing design of social media and Illustrations;
- Sana - Illustrations;
- Luiza - Social media posts, Direction and execution of Project video, Project slides;
- Ahmed - Intro video (2m);
- Giovanna - Hackathon social media posts.
Collaborations and Social media
- Ahmed - Organising collaborations meetings with other iGEM teams
- Sana - Organising collaborations team, Support during collaboration meeting, Reaching out to iGEM teams teams via slack
- Anish - reaching out to iGEM teams
- Luiza - Social media managament
