Team:Queens Canada/Team
Team Members
Executives
Aidan Booker
Aidan Booker
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Director and Outreach Coordinator
Aidan is a fourth-year biochemistry student specializing in Lyme disease research. Aidan has been fascinated by the field of synthetic biology since early high school. He is glad to be a part of the team and contributing to the global synthetic biology community. Aside from academics, Aidan is a cyclist, loves climbing and mountaineering, and backcountry skiing!
Kathryn Jalink
Kathryn Jalink
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Dry Lab Lead
Kathryn is going into her fifth and final year of engineering chemistry partnered with a certificate in business. Kathryn hopes to further specialize in the field of biomedical engineering and will be pursing her passion through her thesis project next year. It is her passion for biochemical and biological engineering that drew her to QGEM. She is excited to help design a product that is beneficial for her local community. In addition to academics, Kathryn is a member of the Women’s Varsity Hockey Team as a goaltender and in her past time enjoys reading, playing with her puppy and spending time at her cottage.
Griffin Watson-Boehnisch
Griffin Watson-Boehnisch
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Wet Lab Lead
Griffin is a fourth-year life science student with hopes to specialize in an anatomy and/or neuroscience thesis. Griffin has always had a passion for using his critical thinking skills and creativity, specifically in the scientific field, to try and innovate new technologies. Outside of academics, Griffin pursues what some might say is too many hobbies which include guitar, learning another language, golfing, among many others.
Volunteers
Amy Boyle
Amy Boyle
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Amy is a fourth-year life science student. She was interested in volunteering with QGEM for the opportunity to collaborate on an innovative research project with her peers. She is excited to be a member of this ambitious, student-led group and is looking forward to learning more about synthetic biology. In her free time, Amy loves to visit local coffee shops, take yoga classes, and spend time with her friends.
Victor Di Donato
Victor Di Donato
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Victor is a third-year student who is an internal transfer into chemical engineering. He is volunteering with QGEM this summer as a part of the wet lab team. He is excited for this opportunity because he is very interested in the field of synthetic biology and collaborating in research with like-minded peers. Some fun facts about himself are that he enjoys staying active and is big into MMA, basketball and hockey. He also he believes iced coffee was the greatest thing invented.
Cecilia Hernandez-Hosaka
Cecilia Hernandez-Hosaka
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Cecilia is a fourth-year chemistry major who aspires to pursue graduate studies in an applied chemistry field. She decided to volunteer with QGEM in the wet lab this summer. She is excited to try something new that is linked to her interests, which is working in a lab to find innovative ways to improve health care! Even though the work is all virtual this summer, she still wanted to gain useful experience by working with others in related fields of study to produce something that can change the way we detect pathogens. In her free time, Cecilia likes to hang out with friends, workout, discover new music and places, and play piano!
Adrienne Lee
Adrienne Lee
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Adrienne is a fourth-year computer engineering student returning from an exciting internship as a full-stack developer. She decided to join this team to utilize her web dev skills to help design the wiki. In addition, she is also excited to learn more about how technology overlaps with biology. In her free time, she likes to spend time with friends and go on bike rides.
Adam Levitan
Adam Levitan
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Adam is a third-year biotechnology student interested in cells and organisms as biological machines. He joined this team to apply this interest to a pertinent Health problem in the Kingston and surrounding community. In his free time, he likes to spend time with friends, enjoy some rock music and play several sports.
Bruce Masotti
Bruce Masotti
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Bruce is a fourth-year undergrad student specializing in life science. He is part of the QGEM outreach team and sometimes comes into the wet lab to help whenever he can.
Julianna Petrenko
Julianna Petrenko
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Julianna is a fourth-year environmental biology major who joined QGEM for the opportunity to contribute to innovative biology research. She is passionate about the environment and sustainable innovation, and is hoping to pursue graduate studies in ecology and evolutionary genetics. Outside of school, she loves to sketch, snowboard and run.
Sania Sahi
Sania Sahi
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Sania is a fourth-year life science major who hopes to work in the medical field in the future. After working as a research assistant on projects about Lyme disease, she decided to volunteer with QGEM as an outreach volunteer to share the knowledge that she learned. She is excited to work with like-minded individuals to learn more about synthetic biology and find innovate solutions to improve healthcare. Outside of school, Sania like to create art, watch cooking competition shows and discover new music.
Reid Sauvé
Reid Sauvé
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Reid Sauvé is an Engineering Chemistry graduate from Queen's University. He loves to play sports, make music, play around with electronics code in his free time. He is originally from a very rural part of Ontario, so working with QGEM on the topic of ticks and lyme disease was a topic that hit home for him and excited him to learn more about.
Marissa Smail
Marissa Smail
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Marissa is a third-year applied mathematics engineering student who aspires to work in the biomedical engineering field. She decided to volunteer with QGEM in the dry lab to learn from her peers, gain experience in design and collaborate on an innovative project. Outside of school, Marissa loves hanging out with her friends, reading, and working out.
Eric Wen
Eric Wen
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Eric is a second-year health sciences student and is volunteering with QGEM’s wet lab team this summer. Eric is very interested in synthetic biology and research. He is looking forward to learning more about synthetic biology and gaining experience in biological design and innovation with QGEM. He is also excited to contribute to the creation of products that can help improve healthcare and prevent diseases (such as Lyme disease) from spreading. In his free time, Eric enjoys playing basketball, running, and playing the piano.
Advisors
Dr. John Allingham (PI)
Dr. John Allingham (PI)
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Dr. Allingham is a Professor in the Department of Biomedical and Molecular Sciences at Queen’s University and is the Lead Faculty Advisor for QGEM. His laboratory studies the structure and function of macromolecular assemblies that produce forces inside cells using X-ray crystallography, cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), fluorescence microscopy, biochemistry, and molecular genetics. His research has helped explain how cancer cells move and how pathogenic fungal cells control transmission of their genomes across generations. Dr. Allingham’s goals for QGEM are to promote synthetic biology and student-led research. When not working in his lab or teaching undergraduate molecular biology, Dr. Allingham enjoys playing tennis and ice hockey, motorcycling on the winding roads of northeastern Ontario, and camping with his family.
Dr. Robert Colautti
Dr. Robert Colautti
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Dr. Robert Colautti is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at Queen’s University. He earned his PhD at the University of Toronto and completed Post-doctoral training at Duke University (North Carolina), the University of British Columbia, and the University of Tuebingen in Germany. Researchers in the Colautti Lab apply computational methods and high-throughput sequencing to solve ecological challenges in new and changing environments. This includes research on deer ticks (Ixodes scapularis) and their associated microbiomes.
Dr. Nader Ghasemlou
Dr. Nader Ghasemlou
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Nader's research team is working at the intersection of neuroimmunology, pain physiology, and circadian biology. Research in his lab uses various models of tissue injury and disease, including spinal cord injury, postoperative wounds, multiple sclerosis, and neuropathic nerve injury to these responses. Using molecular, cellular, and systems biology, his group is working to understand the mechanisms underlying the generation and maintenance of inflammation in the central and peripheral nervous system. All projects in the lab include both a bioinformatics component, using RNA sequencing to identify genes/pathways regulating cell functions, and patient cohort studies, providing a translational component to all projects. Nader obtained his MSc from Queen's, a PhD from McGill University, and completed his postdoctoral work with Dr. Clifford Woolf at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital.
Sono Khan
Sono Khan
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Sono is a recent Queen’s University Alum (21’) from the Biochemistry program and is now in his first year of an MSc within the Therapeutics, Drug Development, and Human Toxicology program at Queen’s University. Last year he was the Director for the QGEM team and is still involved with QGEM as a Graduate Advisor. In his free time, Sono enjoys playing soccer, going skateboarding, and powerlifting.
Kody Klupt
Kody Klupt
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Kody is one of our advisors for this years' team. He was previously the wet lab lead for the 2020 QGEM team. Apart from this team, he is completing his Masters of Science in Biochemistry at Queen’s University. He enjoys BBQ and watching basketball.
Geneviève Norris-Roozmon
Geneviève Norris-Roozmon
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Geneviève is one of our advisors for this year’s team, having been the Dry-Lab Lead for QGEM last year. In between her third and fourth years of Chemical Engineering (Bioengineering Option) at Queen’s, she is currently on a yearlong internship at an alternative meat startup in Boston. In her free time, Geneviève is an avid rock climber, skier, and baker.
Natalie Vanderheyden
Natalie Vanderheyden
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Natalie graduated with a combined BScH and Advanced Diploma program in Biotechnology from Queen’s University and St. Lawrence College in Spring 2021. She is very interested in biotechnology solutions in agriculture and this passion led her to the DiCenzo lab. She is currently working with S. meliloti and altering the flg22 region of bacterial flagella to reduce immune responses in Arabidopsis. Outside of the lab, she is an avid golfer, reader and movie junkie.
Andrew Winterborn
Andrew Winterborn
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Dr. Andrew Winterborn is the University Veterinarian at Queen's University and was a fundamental contributor to our team's 2021 project. He was responsible for the idea that spawned our project as well as has been a consultant for the veterinary focus of our project.