Attributions

As iGEM TU Eindhoven 2021 we would like to express our gratitude towards multiple people who helped us in various ways to get the best out of our team and to make our project a success.

Supervisors

First of all, we would like to thank our supervisors prof. dr. ir. Luc Brunsveld, dr. ir. Tom de Greef, and prof. dr. Maarten Merkx for guiding us through the scientific part of our project and, in particular, in helping us overcome our problems that sometimes seemed to be non-resolvable. We also would like to thank dr. ir. Tom de Greef for helping us with providing information for our modelling part of the project.

An even bigger thank you to our daily supervisor, dr. Yan Ni who was there for all our questions regarding the lab. She introduced us to the biochemical lab, taught us all the necessary lab techniques and was always available to answer our questions. We would not have been able to succeed in our experiments without her, so for that we are extremely grateful.

Laboratory

On top of our supervisors, we asked numerous questions to several Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) staff members which were specialized in different topics. As such we asked Bente Somsen for her advice on how to co-transform our three plasmids in bacteria, Alexander Gräwe for his advice about the restriction and ligation of the plasmids and inserts, Anna-Maria Makri Pistikou for providing us with the required amount of doxycyline, and we asked Hans-Martin Schwab and Hein de Hoop to help us with the ultrasound experiments. Furthermore, Peggy de Graaf (Lab Technician) and Liesbeth Varion-Verhagen (Biosafety Officer) were really important for supplying us with the right information and granting us access to the ML-I lab of the university. Furthermore, we want to thank all the other colleagues who have helped us inside the lab.

Human Practices

We spoke to a large variety of experts in the field of IBD. We want to give them a big thanks for their contribution to our project. First of all, we want to thank the gastroenterologists; Marieke Pierik, Mark Löwenberg, Maurice Lutgens, and the gastroenterologists of the Catharina hospital in Eindhoven for their feedback on our approach in comparison to the current used endoscopy. In addition, the IBD patients interviews were of high importance to describe the need in the field as well as the input of all the people who took the time to fill in the general survey. Furthermore, we’d like to thank BioConnection, and especially Alexander Willemse and Paul van Zutphen, for helping us to design the pill concept of the project. Additionally, thanks to Bruno Pot for pointing out the risks related to the E.coli bacteria and the suggestion to switch to the strain L. plantarum WCFS1. Also, we would like to thank Johannes Rath, the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), and Europabio for the discussion on the safety and ethical aspects of our project. Last but not least, we want to thank Paul Vernooij for his input on how to be attractive to future investors.

TU/e Student Team Management

iGEM TU Eindhoven is an official student team of TU/e. Therefore, we have been present at several information days at our university and public events. Our team was assisted with this by Mia Jelsma (head of all the student teams), together with Sacha Claessens (student team communication), they formed the communication between our team and the university, and we would thus like to thank them.

Foundation iGEM TU Eindhoven

We would like to thank the Foundation iGEM TU Eindhoven of the Eindhoven University of Technology for helping us throughout our project, for example with our invoices and managing our banking account. The Foundation iGEM TU Eindhoven is a foundation founded by former iGEM TU Eindhoven team members to provide more autonomy and guarantee continuous support of the many iGEM TU Eindhoven teams still to come. We would like to especially thank Jeroen Deckers, Stijn Hofstraat and Tim van der Hek.

End Presentation Video and Team/Individual Photos

We would like to thank Art Selbach for his professional work delivered for the end presentation video, including filming, animating, and editing. Furthermore, we want to thank him for taking our team and individual pictures.

Wiki Guidance

We would like to thank Herman Groenenboom and Adriaan Groenenboom for their help during the coding when creating our wiki pages.

Design

We would like to thank Amy Roos for her help in designing the wiki, our poster for the BeNeLux Mini Jamboree, and other visuals during our project.

BeNeLux Mini Jamboree

We would like to thank everyone participating in our BeNeLux Mini Jamboree, especially our judges Matthew Turk, Petra Hogervorst and Maarten Lubbers, as well as all the participating iGEM teams. Furthermore, we would like to thank the Zwarte Doos for making their location and catering services available to us and the Eindhoven University of Technology for lending us their equipment to make it possible to host offline and online our BeNeLux Mini Jamboree.

General

We appreciate the help and advice from the previous iGEM TU Eindhoven teams who made sure that there was a smooth transition between their team and ours. We would especially like to thank Claire Michielsen from the iGEM TU Eindhoven 2019 team who helped us throughout the whole project.

Furthermore, we would like to thank the iGEM Ambassadors Matthew Turk and Abigail Conner for their guidance along the whole year and answering all our questions.

Team Member

Luke Rossen - Team Manager. As the Team Manager, Luke was involved in every part of the project, especially in modeling. He managed and overviewed the general trajectory of the project. He was responsible for reaching the iGEM deadlines in time, such as the deliverables, and acted as a mediator between internal and external parties. Due to an injury, Lukes Internal Team Manager role was not possible anymore. Therefore, some tasks between Luke and Fleur were transferred in the final stage of the project.

Fleur Kalberg - Human Practices, Collaboration/Partnership Captain, and Internal Team Manager. As the general Human Practices Captain, she was responsible for the overview of human practices. Furthermore, she was responsible for keeping an overview on all the running collaborations and the partnership with team iGEM BOKU Vienna. At the end of our project, she became the Internal Team Manager.

Naomi Span - Secretary and Integrated Human Practices Captain. As Secretary, Naomi was responsible for taking minutes during meetings, updating the shared agenda, and organizing the iGEM mail. As the Integrated Human Practices Captain, Naomi was responsible for arranging and having all the meetings with experts in the field of IBD as well as integrating the feedback into the project. Furthermore, she organized together with Josephina the BeNeLux Mini Jamboree.

Josephina Smits - Public Relations and Website/Wiki Captain. Josephina takes care of the Public Relations, i.e. the outreach to the press and managing the social media channels. As Website/Wiki Captain, she was responsible for the creation of the Wiki and for updating the iGEM TU Eindhoven Website. Furthermore, she organized together with Naomi the BeNeLux Mini Jamboree.

Daniek Hoorn - Sponsor Coördinator, Finance Manager, and Lab Captain. As Sponsor Coördinator, Daniek was searching for and in contact with stakeholders to get funding. As Finance Manager, she kept track of incomes and expenses made throughout the project. Furthermore, together with Luke she was in close contact with the foundation iGEM TU Eindhoven. Daniek was one of the three Lab Captains of the team and was mainly responsible for the part improvement.

Tessa Warmink - Modelling Captain and Education/Communication Captain. As Modelling Captain, Tessa was responsible for the computational model of the biological system, i.e. the sensor model and ARG model. As Education/Communication Captain, she was in charge of creating educational material and pitching our project to the broader public.

Werner Doensen - Lab Captain. Werner served as one of the three Lab Captains of the team. He was mainly responsible for planning all the experiments and keeping track of all progression. Furthermore, he designed the system for proof-of-concept, maintained the supplies, checked and performed protocols, and analyzed the obtained results.

Ingrid Kolen - Design Captain and Lab Captain. Ingrid was responsible for the design of our personalized iGEM logo, promo video, and clothing. Furthermore, she was the contact person for the designs we outsourced. As one of the three Lab Captains, she was in charge of making the protocols, execution of the experiments in the lab, and analyzing the obtained results.

Team:TU-Eindhoven/Attributions