Team:Siberia/Attributions
Team Siberia
Artemii Ivanov
Team Leader
“Hi, I’m Artemii, and I’m a co-captain of Team Siberia. For me, iGEM is an intense and interesting task, for the solution of which you need to study, analyse, organize, sometimes stay up late into the night. It is this kind of work that gives me the feeling that I am using the quickly passing time to the maximum. iGEM is a full-fledged project, from the initial pitch to implementation, it is a creative, managerial and social challenge, tackling which, a person gains invaluable scientific experience.
After all, science isn’t just about the experiments and their results — it is a special form of art, built on free communication and collaboration of scientists from all over the world. I have always been inspired by the opportunity to explore something, to comprehend the world with my head. What you choose to study in particular is not that important, the main thing is to enjoy the process, the ultimate goal being a feeling of completion and satisfaction. Synthetic biology is of professional interest to me (I hope), but it does not exhaust my desire for knowledge.
I love history — I like to learn how we got to this kind of life and why at some points in time everything turned out one way and not another. I know a huge number of anecdotes and tell them well. In general, the ability to tell jokes is an excellent practice of public speaking and building a coherent text. One fact of my biography perfectly describes me as a person — once, I took third place at the regional stage of the Russian Literature Olympiad. But there's a small detail — I did not prepare for it at all. I actually was in a class, specialized in physics and maths, and went to the school stage of the Olympiad with a friend as a joke to skip some boring lesson.”
“Hi everyone, I'm Danil, Siberia's team leader. I’m excited to work on the iGEM project this year. I mostly value this experience because of the real change that we’re making with this huge and diverse community. It definitely aligns with my future goal of helping people and the nature that surrounds us with a range of innovative decisions in synthetic biology and genetic engineering.
I see the opportunity of participation in iGEM 2021 as a whole experience in managing a project, including gathering a team, raising funds, and developing the project I believe that gaining that kind of skill will eventually help me in my future career. Moreover, the number of valuable contacts and knowledge to be gained throughout iGEM 2021 amazes me.
I’m definitely a versatile person. There’s a range of things that I love to do and things that I’d love to experience someday. Here are some basic facts about me. I’ve graduated from music school. I enjoy running, and I hope eventually to attend a marathon. One of my biggest inspirations is Neri Oxman, an architect and scientist. Any kind of design process fascinates me, so I also see iGEM as an opportunity to upgrade this skill as well.”
Danil Shchukin
Team Leader
Marina Chuprikova
Team Leader
My name is Marina, and I am a team leader, and I’m responsible for lab work. I’m glad to have assembled a team to participate in iGEM this year. It is very important to me to help people not to be afraid to take on new projects. Even the craziest ideas can be brought to life. The freedom to choose a project topic is very significant because in our careers, for the most part, we just have to do what is required of us. And iGEM provides such an opportunity, and in the international arena nonetheless.
iGEM, primarily, is a way for me to express myself in terms of laboratory and organizational skills. Through this competition, I can step back from my research topic a bit and try something new. iGEM has already helped me try my hand at organizing and planning a project literally from scratch. That’s not an easy process, but it's certainly very interesting. I like to compare it to some form of art, in which you develop and polish a project, like a raw ore to a diamond. Every self-respecting scientist should be able to design his own project.
I get an incredible thrill from “wet” science — I really like to spend time in the laboratory, amongst motivated people. The freedom to choose what job I do is important to me. Even if there is a lot of work, if I find it interesting, I can spend nights on end doing it. In this regard, I like the Devs miniseries, after watching which you realize that it's amazing when you can say to yourself that nobody can do my job for me! This is exactly what I am striving for.
Hi, my name is Daria, and I’m responsible for managing our social media accounts and organising collaborations. My overall goal in life is to satisfy my curiosity about the workings of the world and ultimately benefit society in some way. I’m a fan of applied problems, and, at the end of the day, there are quite a few problems in our world that can be solved with the help of modern biology.
Modern biology is essentially a multidisciplinary science, and synthetic biology in particular is a perfect example of what can be achieved when applying various approaches from different fields. It's interesting to see a close approximation of the real scientific process through iGEM, bureaucratic aspect included and all. iGEM also provides me with the opportunity to learn so much about the complexity of carrying out experiments from my colleagues, who have much more lab experience due to working in SB RAS institutes.
One thing that a career in science will provide me with is the opportunity to travel the world. I'm fascinated by different cultures and I love learning about their history. I'm bilingual, which is a great asset in our modern, English-speaking world, but learning even more languages is a key to understanding people. Considering the collaborative nature of our field of work, that should prove to be a useful skill. In my spare time, I like to play the piano (ABRSM Grade 8) and I'm quite fond of cycling and taking walks in nature.
Daria Malysheva
Collaboration/Media
Alexander Vikhorev
Dry Lab
Hi, my name is Alexander, and I am a member of the iGEM Team Siberia. I am a bioinformatician and I do bioinformatics work on the project. I am very interested in studying biological data, in particular data from high-throughput RNA sequencing, with the help of programming and statistics. iGEM for me is an opportunity to try something new. I have read a lot about synthetic biology and am inspired to create new biological systems that can benefit humanity. I have no practical experience in synthetic biology.
Recently, I have been working very hard, and I plan to continue my scientific career by enrolling in graduate school. In addition to doing the research itself, science encourages me to travel and interact with the research of many people, including those from different countries. Aside from work, I try to lead an active lifestyle; I like to run and ride a bike in the summer. Also, I like to play chess and table tennis.
Hey! My name is Anna, and I am doing illustration and design for our project. For example, I’m the one who is drawing the portraits in the posts about the participants — I ought to admit, drawing my own was quite amusing. I see my future life as an organic combination of scientific and creative activities since both of these areas fascinate me — in completely different, but equally strong ways. And although sometimes they seem like completely unrelated fields, I see many points of intersection between them. One of my main goals is to find these points, benefitting society, and achieve satisfaction from the process and the result.
For me, iGEM is a challenge, in which science and creativity tightly intersect. In addition to the scientific aspect itself, it is important to beautifully package your project, maintain your social media, develop merchandise — these and many other things require illustration and design skills. Teamwork plays an important role both in the scientific and in the media parts of the project, hence iGEM is also a wonderful way to improve teamwork skills.
Another thing that I find meaningful is the educational, popularization of science aspect of the project — it’s a small but important contribution to eradicating prejudices regarding synthetic biology in our country and around the world. I hope to take part in educational projects of our team for schoolchildren and students. It is also important for me because I often participate in various educational projects for schoolchildren in biology in my free time. Aside from that, I do design and illustration, and I’m interested in art. In the summer, I mostly like to travel and also ride a bike and look for interesting routes, so that each of them is its own mini “journey”.
Anna Skotnikova
Media
Ulyana Shishkova
Media
Hi, I am Ulyana, a member of our iGEM team responsible for lab work and media. Currently, I’m in a creative search of sorts and try not to refuse any offers that fate throws at me. In the future, I would like to dedicate myself to the study of human behaviour and go into psychoanalysis, to help people feel a little better
Why iGEM? From the very beginning, I was interested in the format of this competition, since I had not participated in anything like this before. And indeed, who would have thought that we, students, future scientists, can already not only come up with our own experiment but also implement it in real life. For me, it seems quite unusual when you are “your own scientist”. You set the task yourself, you decide the course of work, you choose the materials yourself, you do everything by yourself. With no supervision. This inspires me to “test” the future profession for which I am studying — the career of a scientist.
At one point in my youth, I used to run a list on my phone with 100 facts about me, but I don’t think it's worth writing all of them here. So, here is a small summary: I like psychology and psychotherapy, popsci and travelling. Back in a more free period of my life, I had received a Russian climber's badge and a certified diver diploma. It’s not very clear how that happened, since I don’t really like sports. I also love pottery, growing flowers, and Italian and Asian cuisine.
Hello! My name is Anastasia, I am involved in the educational part of the project. I joined the team because I’m thrilled by the idea of bioengineering — the creation of biological objects endowed with the properties of interest to us. And as part of iGEM, we are working to create such a bacterium!
Here’s an interesting fact — as a child, I was not interested in biology at all. I told my parents that this subject was unnecessary: “Why are we even studying plants, I’m not going to be an agronomist!”. I developed a love for the field after participating in biological Olympiads and interesting projects. I met amazing teachers and mentors. So I got enthused by the idea of working on the development of oncolytic adenoviruses (viruses used in cancer therapy).
And now, while working on educational projects, I can inspire people to study biology just as they once inspired me! This is very motivating!
Anastasia Paramonik
Education
Evgeniy Egorov
Dry Lab
My name is Evgeniy, I am a student at the Department of Bioengineering and Bioinformatics in Moscow State University. I have always been fascinated by the fact that the more you learn, the more you realise how little you know. In my life, I strive to learn as much as I can about the world around me.
I decided to participate in iGEM because I wanted to test myself, I wanted to see if I could handle being involved in real scientific research. By participating in iGEM I hope to gain new experiences, new knowledge, as well as meet proactive people from other parts of the world.
My hobbies include reading books and watching TV series. My favourite author is Donna Tartt, I love all her works, it’s a shame there are so few of them. My favourite show is the Netflix series The Crown. I never thought I could watch a historical series without tearing away from the screen, but I was proven wrong.
Primary PI
Sergei Sedykh, PhD in Biochemstry, researcher at laboratory of repair enzymes, Institute of chemical biology and fundamental medicine, ICBFM SB RAS.
Secondary PI
Maria Galyamova, the head of the Infrastructure center “HealthNet”, head of the project support group of the national technology initiative.SIBIRIA