We have always been a student run team; founded and led by students. Our instructors, advisors, and mentors have aided us when we needed their help. Broad Run iGEM team members were responsible for almost all parts of running our iGEM team: team planning, fundraising, background research, designing the project, writing up protocols, ordering supplies, organizing events, and carrying out lab work. The help of our advisors and mentors is greatly appreciated and acknowledged below. We would like to extend our sincere thanks to:
Instructors
Ms.Regina Kieninger - A big thank you for working with the county to approve our trip to Boston, advertising our public outreach and fundraising events at school. She has helped us host public forum events at Broad Run high school in her Independent Science Research and Honors chemistry classes. She has rallied behind our team, always on call to solve problems and support us through all the hardships.Nina Arendtsz, PhD - A big thank you to our instructor for handling logistics; working with iGEM HQ, driving us to and from the lab, accompanying us on outreach events including the trips to the Armstrong headquarters and the Marietta plant, arranging our accomodations and travel to Boston. She has always been there to support our team, for which we are very grateful.
Mentors
Janet Cascio, PhD. - Taught us how to use the spectrophotometer and provided many of the materials for the testing part of our project. Provided advice and helped troubleshoot on our starch testing and cell growth testing. Yohan Sumathipala - Accompanied us to Baltimore on several lab days, helped with checking protocols for lab work, assisted with calculating equations and dilutions, and advised on primer design. Also helped out at two public events, 2016 Loudoun STEM Day and Ashburn Public Library event.
Expert Advisors
Loren Looger, PhD. - Lab Leader at Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute - Advised on kill switch designs, recommended gene switches to use, and checked final kill switch design.Adil Azuber, UMBC, Baltimore - Provided advice on mathematical modeling, assisting in finding relevant literature and understanding kinetic equations for enzyme reactions.
Other
Stone Bridge High School - Provided us a biology lab from Aug 5 to October 15. They were very generous in accepting us on very short notice, especially in the summer when school was not in session. Furthermore, they kindly gave us full access to their limited resources and materials. A sincere thanks goes out to Dr. Janet Cascio, who took us under her wings to support the continuation of our project, without which our project would have stalled. Our sincere appreciation and thanks goes out to Stone Bridge high school and Dr. Janet Cascio.Daniel Lollman - Improved our wiki template code to make it more aesthetically pleasing and easier to navigate.Baltimore Underground Science Space - Provided us with lab space, equipment and materials from July up through August 4, at which point they decided to form their own iGEM team. Lisa Scheifele, PhD., BUGSS - Provided pAG36 yeast vector and uracil deficient S.cerevisiae strain.Sarah Laun, PhD., BUGSS - Supervised lab work at Baltimore Underground Science Space from July to August 4, approved protocols, and made antibiotic LB plates for E.coli cultures. We are thankful to Sarah for putting in additional hours outside of her work hours on those days that our lab work ran overtime. Tom Burkett, PhD, BUGSS - Transferred funds BUGSS received from Armstrong ($5,000) to iGEM headquarters ($4,500) to pay our team’s registration fee. Accompanied us to Armstrong Headquarters meeting. Ryan Hammond, DIY Bio Enthusiast - Provided us with yeast transformation protocols, as he was also completing a yeast transformation project at BUGSS. Ella Coleman - Helped with prepping yeast cultures to the correct density for transformation and assisted our team members on gel extraction and amplification PCR. Originally on our official team roster in the summer, when the BUGSS team formed in August she, a Baltimore resident, joined their team.
