Team:Rice/Members

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Rohan Bhardwaj
2nd Year Cognitive Science Major, Global Health Technologies Minor

Rohan is a kindhearted teammate who loves synthetic biology almost as much as he loves James Harden! He is a Pre-Med student majoring in Cognitive Science and is minoring in Global Health Technologies. When he is not doing human genetics research at the nearby Baylor College of Medicine, he is playing pickup soccer and basketball or hanging out with his friends. This rising sophomore is involved with the wet lab aspect of Rice-iGem and is helping with the mammalian cell culture and testing of the biosensors; he is also involved with human practices.

Kendall Burks
4th Year Biochemistry and Cell Biology Major

Hailing from the great city of Waxahachie (“THE WAX”), TX, Kendall is a true Texan and a rising senior studying Biochemistry and Cell Biology. As an avid plant biologist and geneticist, her love for plants goes far beyond their abilities to produce oxygen or provide us with lovely salads. Kendall and her lab work to understand the inner-workings of the elusive organelle, the peroxisome. Besides her experience in the Bartel Lab, Kendall is a second-year member of the Rice iGEM team and continues to head the Human Practices portion of the project. Since surviving iGEM and the MCAT last summer, Kendall has continued on her path to greatness by presenting at several conferences and applying to the MD/PhD programs of her dreams. The future Dr. Kendall Burks can also be seen working out in the gym, serving on tennis courts, or undertaking the Herculean task known as “the walk to/from West Lot.”

John Chen
1st Year Computer Science Major

John is a freshman from Duncan College majoring in Computer Science. He contributes as part of the wiki team. When he’s not playing basketball, watching basketball or talking about basketball, you’ll find him reading up about the latest technological or scientific breakthroughs.

Kevin Chen
2nd Year Biochemistry and Cell Biology Major

A wild Kevin appears! Kevin is a sophomore premed majoring in biochemistry and cell biology. He gets wet in the lab for iGEM and serves as the club treasurer. Recently coming out of retirement from playing instruments, Kevin can play a few songs on the piano and used to the play the cello; he plays music for patients at MD Anderson. When Kevin’s not busy, he’s probably attempting to work out with his suitemates, catching up on Russell Westbrook blowing up the NBA, or asserting his foosball dominance. Bonus fun fact: he will eat almost everything with chopsticks because he can.

John Luke
3rd Year Physics Major, Minor in Biochemistry

This guy's majoring in Biochemistry and Cell Biology, but his singing voice will make you wonder if he's a Vocal Performance major (totally check out The Rice Philharmonics on Youtube!). Even though a lot of his time this summer was spent cooking up gold nanorods for the Hafner Lab back at Rice, the behind-the-scenes work he's doing for the Rice iGEM team will get them to come to the next Jamboree bigger and louder (and maybe punnier)!

Sofia Gereta

Sofia is just a little hatchling of a Rice owl, but the members page couldn't have happened without her!

Jessica Lee
2nd Year Biochemistry and Cell Biology Major

The extraordinary graphic designer Jessica Lee has involved herself so much in the design of all graphics, for the Wiki and otherwise, that, although she asked all of us to send in short bios for the members’ page, she has been unable to write in her own! Without her initiative to pull together all the subgroups, this Wiki would be very barren.

Quentin Li
3rd Year Bioengineering Major

Quentin is a rising junior from McMurtry College majoring in Bioengineering. In the iGEM team, he will be primarily contributing to the mathematical modeling and wiki. Passionate about advancements in biotechnologies, he also devotes himself to the research at Qutub System Biology Lab. Besides biology, he loves reading, running, biking, and hanging out with friends. When he is not at lab or library, you will probably see him on the outer loop or on the bike track. As a runner, running in a full marathon before graduating from Rice is always one of his dreams!

Margaret Lie
4th Year Biochemistry and Cell Biology Major

The next time you're at the casinos in Lake Charles, Louisiana, there's no one more dependable you could bet on than Margaret Lie. Her organizational skills have yet to be matched by any human, and she always gets the job done. A Biochemistry and Cell Biology major, Margaret is poised to take her senior year at Rice by storm. As if a bachelor's degree weren't enough, Margaret is pursuing her master's degree AT THE SAME TIME. She's just that much cooler than you. Her independent research project focuses on the artisanal craft of creating near infrared fluorescent reporters. As she begins her second year in iGEM, she will continue her role leading the wet lab team on this year's project. In addition to her research and her work for iGEM, Margaret is currently working on approximately 356,234 applications to medical schools. She is appreciative of the opportunity to hone her essay writing skills to the extreme. When Margaret isn't working, you can find her scouring YouTube for the funniest of videos.

Jade Dever Matthews
2nd Year Computer Science

Jade is a sophomore pursuing a computer science degree. He enjoys watching hours of Youtube videos on random tutorials; he is a dabbler in various activities - photography, Super Smash Bros, etc. This is his first year on the Rice iGEM team - writing the code for this very same page!

Emma McCormick
2nd Year Biochemistry and Cell Biology Major

Emma is a rising sophomore studying biochemistry and cell biology. She definitely becomes invested in her research; for a time she enjoyed referring to herself as the Lord of the Drosophila in what she considered a charmingly dorky literary reference. A relic from this period, a framed picture of drosophila larvae a.k.a. maggots, is prominently displayed in her dorm room where it creeps out visitors (and possibly her roommate). Don't tell the flies, but she's moved on to spending long days in the lab with sarcomas. When she's not being science-y, you can probably find her hanging out in a residential college kitchen eating way too many cookies with her friends.

Peter Suzuki
2nd Year Bioengineering Major

Peter Suzuki is a sophomore Bioengineering student from Martel College. This is his first year with Rice iGEM after having participated in iGEM in high school, and he will be contributing primarily to wet lab research for the project. When he's not in the lab culturing bacteria and running PCRs, Peter enjoys playing guitar and violin for Rice Mariachi Luna Llena (which everyone in the Houston area should go see!!) and playing baseball with the Rice club team. Any remaining time that he does not spend sleeping he can be found at the OEDK--and I mean any time of day or night. Literally. He's logged every hour from 12 am to 11 pm at some point this past year. "Engineering is fun," he says. "Alright sure whatever," we reply.

Christine Tang
2nd Year Kinesiology Major

Christine is a rising sophomore at Lovett College who majors in Kinesiology/Pre-med. As someone who is both passionate and careful about research, she is the epitome of a team worker in any setting. Christine is always willing to help out and constantly striving to do her best in anything she does. She's the girl that brightens up the lab every day with a smile or two, even in the morning. If you don't see Christine crunching out results for the whole day in wet-lab, then you will probably catch her drinking coffee, working out or trying to study in the chaos of the lab. Or, if you're lucky, you might see her enjoying a game of Smash...

Peter Tang
3rd Year Bioengineering Major

Work hard, work out, homework; if you catch Peter Tang, you’ll probably find him working. As a junior bioengineer, he definitely has plenty to catch up on. On top of that, he’s got his hands full working at the Maitra Lab in MD Anderson. But, he definitely likes to play hard too and he documents his adventures on the iGem snapchat. As an international man of mystery, Peter has developed a very particular set of skills. He is Gordon Ramsey in the kitchen, Lebron James on the basketball court, and Adele on the karaoke machine. To accomplish all these activities, Peter consumes lots of coffee.

Shaurey Vetsa
1st Year Bioengineering Major

My name is Shaurey Vetsa and I will be a freshman studying bioengineering. I am part of the IGEM Wiki Editors and Software Teams. In my free time, I love playing basketball, drawing, hiking, and reading. A fun fact of mine is that my nickname from middle school has been the grand antelope.