Team:UIUC Illinois/Team

Team | UIUC iGEM

Meet the UIUC iGEM Team

UIUC_Illinois 2021 iGEM Team is representing University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 6 Illinis(ILL-INI!)-3 studying Bioengineering, 2 studying Molecular and Cell Biology, 1 studying Integrative Biology-worked on the apPETite project over the summer of 2021. Under the guidance of amazing mentors, the UIUC team worked on creating a better PET degrading enzyme

Members

Mary Cook
Senior in Bioengineering

iGEM has been an amazing experience in that it is student driven research. We had the chance to design our own project with guidance from our mentors and collaborate with other iGEM teams in order to combine research efforts.

Jefrin Joseph
Junior in Molecular Cellular Biology

iGEM has been a really educational opportunity and has given me a greater appreciation for research and the research process. As opposed to a typical research opportunity where we join onto someone else's pre-existing project, iGEM enables us to design our own project from scratch and become thoroughly immersed in the process.

Kristin Lai
Senior in Bioengineering

iGEM is a truly unique experience and I really enjoyed being a part of the UIUC team this year. I appreciated being able to have a direct impact on the design and implementation of our project—it’s unlike any other research I’ve been involved in.

Suva Narayan
Senior in Bioengineering

I had a lot of fun being on the drylab team this year and learned a lot of new things that I could utilize in my own future projects. I also really enjoyed looking at how drylab and wetlab processes come together for a singular project despite being so drastically different in nature.

Royal Shrestha
Junior in Molecular and Cellular Biology Honors

I loved drylab work so much last year that I decided to be part of the wetlab team this year. Lots of great experiences this summer, and the most memorable was coming in at the middle of the night to explore the entire empty research facility!

Angela Yoon
Senior in Integrative Biology

I rejoined for this year because I love to keep learning new things and meeting passionate people. iGEM enabled me to explore my interest in bioinformatics field. I am so grateful for the support we get for independent group research projects.

Mentors

Dr.Christopher Rao
Primary PI

Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Daniel Ryerson
Outreach coordinator

Outreach Activities Coordinator at Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology

Anshu Deewan
Wetlab Graduate Advisor

Ph.D. Candidate at Rao Lab, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Tarun Mahajan
Drylab Graduate Advisor

Graduate Research Assistant at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

William Woodruff
Wetlab Graduate Advisor

Chemical Engineering PhD Student at Rao Lab, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Anna Fedders
Research Coordinator

Research Coordinator at Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation