“I was not designed to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.”
― Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
Abbie Rogan
University College of London
"Besides having to wear trousers in the lab, I really love the research here, so I decided to stay for my fourth year at UCL. As a biochemistry major, one of my favorite aspects of synthetic biology is its combination with other disciplines. I also love seeing how art can be combined with synthetic biology; from concrete crack sealing bacteria to DNA used for information storage, there are so many cool things that can be done. Even at school, I couldn't focus solely on sciences (I also studied English Lit). I find that this variety helps for keeping me aware of the world, and actually assists with creativity and keeping my brain active. This is especially true in the outreach work we are doing: iGEM involves reaching out to other engineers worldwide with different perspectives. -- indeed, the opinions of people of different fields, and how they perceive what I am doing with synbio, again, keep my mind aware of all the unique viewpoints we hold."
Brian Kenn Baltzar
University of Southern Denmark
"Biomedicine majors take the road of discovery into the human body. We bridge the gap between the medical and scientific worlds. A biomedical researcher develops new medicine by looking at diseases on a molecular level, discovering what makes us sick and how to cure it. The World Health Organization estimates that in 2050 antimicrobial resistance will cause 10 million premature deaths, making it a bigger problem than cancer. I am working to demolish these predictions. The microbial world has a huge toolbox that we are beginning to open in synthetic biology. I just want to apply these tools to make something to save mankind- nothing big you know :)"
Margaret Lie
Rice University
“It was January of freshman year when I was first introduced to synthetic biology in the Silberg Lab. Before this experience, I didn't realize that my love for proteins and DNA could be more concretely translated into a love for synthetic biology. One of the most rewarding aspects of lab work is seeing positive results, and when experiments work, the results never cease to surprise me. Unique to synthetic biology is the crossroad between basic science and engineering. This collaboration allows us to tackle real-world problems and potential applications by creating explosive sensing devices or pills that help dogs eat chocolate. Science blends the optimism of future advances with the reality of experimental failure, but these failures provide just another valuable challenge for me to make an alternative plan to counter the unexpected. I love synthetic biology, and I will never stop questioning since characteristics like insatiable curiosity are important to me. It doesn’t matter how much I'm paid or what others are doing. If I am serving for the right purpose with my passion, I will be happy.”
Christine Tang
Rice University
“This is my first year doing iGEM. Honestly, I did not know much about synthetic biology before I joined iGEM, but I must say that now I love it! You can do so many different things, like engineer bacteria to produce synthetic proteins. I believe that it is a great field that will keep expanding and developing in the future.
What I get most out of research is a sense of fulfillment. However, starting research was not easy for me. When I first started a year ago, I felt really daunted because I had no experience at all and was surrounded by experts. I did not want to let anyone down. I hardly felt any fulfillment; in fact, I felt like I was causing more trouble in the lab. Despite all that, I slowly improved and learned more. I realized that as long as I keep trying my best, I will overcome the intimidating first weeks of any new experience or position. Then one day, I can look back and be proud of my accomplishments.”
David Zong
Rice University
“I was in a robotics club in high school, but it didn’t give me the satisfaction of working in a field related to another one of my favorite subjects: biology. So, reading about iGEM (essentially DIY biological robots) on the New York Times came as a friendly surprise to me. I joined the iGEM team at University of Washington, initially learning everything about research, and eventually contributed 4 and half years of hard work to iGEM for Washington. In 2010, our first year, my brilliant teammate Sean wrote his first author paper on the project. In 2011, our team won the grand prize in the competition! Being on such a high performance team was extremely rewarding, but the fact of the matter is that I still don’t know a lot of things, even after that experience – I came to realize this after countless mistakes I made throughout my PhD program. I know so little, which speaks for how much more there is to be discovered in this field. There are countless possibilities on where synthetic biology could lead the scientific world. If I were to have unlimited resources to put in scientific research, I would develop synthetic brains. Is it possible that we could maintain a human mind in there? Maybe we are just brains ourselves, built to power a large computing machine.”
Emma McCormick
Rice University
“I find the constant problem solving in research really engaging. It’s a puzzle embedded with problems from small day-to-day issues, such as figuring out why you’re getting wonky PCR results, to those larger problems with meaningful implications that you’re working towards solving, like discovering how blood vessels form in tumors. Synthetic biology presents an exciting way to tackle an astonishing variety of problems because it’s often limited only by the imagination. “Do you have anything else to say to the post reader?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Okay, good.” ”
Tiffany Dang
University of Calgary
“I find the constant problem solving in research really engaging. It’s a puzzle embedded with problems from small day-to-day issues, such as figuring out why you’re getting wonky PCR results, to those larger problems with meaningful implications that you’re working towards solving, like discovering how blood vessels form in tumors. Synthetic biology presents an exciting way to tackle an astonishing variety of problems because it’s often limited only by the imagination. “Do you have anything else to say to the post reader?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Okay, good.” ”
Jessica Lee
Rice University
“Every high schooler learns the basics of biology. I remember making paper plasmids and isolating DNA from strawberries. When I got to Rice, I realized that I had the tools all along, but I wasn’t familiar with combining them until I learned about SynBio through BIOC lab and iGEM. SynBio is like microbiology engineering. (I’d actually be open to majoring in that.) And engineering is about design. I’ve always loved design because it’s such a versatile brain teaser whether that be graphic, product, or plasmid design. My classmates actually question why I’m not an engineer since I’m interested in entrepreneurship and designing things, but I don't want to stray too far away from biology. SynBio allows me to be a wannabe engineer, and who knows what ideas I’ll be able to come up with? To every “STEM" person, I urge you to be open to "non-STEM" endeavors. In an increasingly interdisciplinary world, there are so many ways to explore all your interests.”
Sam Prudence
University of East Anglia in Norwich, England
"What is Synthetic biology? In a nutshell it is currently sitting where computer science was in the late 80's, on the cusp of revolutionising society and culture. My first impression was just that it's a new field with masses of potential, the next big medium through which society will evolve. In the future, biotech can tap into the power of enzymes and be used for cleaner, more efficient industrial processes. For instance, our current iGEM project is trying to engineer the bacteria Shewanella oneidensis to produce hydrogen when fed electrons using hydrogenase enzymes, this can be used as a new energy storage mechanism. This is just one of the new applications through which we can use synthetic biology. Evolution has created this massive diversity of incredible innovations, we just have to put them together and reform them for our purposes."
Kendall Burks
Rice University
“This is my second year as a member of Rice’s iGEM team. Since becoming involved in iGEM, I have been in charge of ‘Human Practices,’ where I integrate synthetic biology with community perspectives and bridge gaps in scientific knowledge. This year we have been placing a greater emphasis on community outreach, especially looking toward the next generation of scientists. Events such as Building with Biology and the IBB Girls Bioethics Debate are great ways to provide necessary initial exposure to these students. I am excited to see how they may advance the field of Syn Bio and fearlessly embrace its potential. Before coming to college, I could never picture myself as a hard core scientist. Now, I cannot imagine my future career without applying my passion for research. From discoveries in plant molecular genetics to engineering biological pathways using well-characterized molecules, I cultivated a broad knowledge base and gained keen perspectives on problem solving. For me, everything comes back to the cycle of passing knowledge forward. Without the mentorship structures from Rice and iGEM, I would not be who I am today. Seek out meaningful mentorship experiences, and you will learn the most when you least expect it.”
Yenelly Samora
Houston ISD's César Chávez High School
As part of the Human Practices portion of our project, we decided to organize a debate on the ethics of Synthetic Biology for the IBB high school girls. (The IBB Girls STEM Initiative brings high school seniors to Rice for a week of STEM immersion activities.) Prior to the event, the students were given several articles to read in preparation for the debate. Below is a response pieced together from multiple students collectively referred to as “Yenelly Samora”: “This activity helped me have more knowledge on what Synthetic Biology really is, and the argument helped it to be more fun to learn. There was a lot of excitement, and it got people to communicate with each other. It was helpful the way we got to argue as scientists and researchers. We got to put ourselves into other people’s positions and see what they are trying to accomplish, and I think it’s very helpful to gain that insight of something else. In addition to having fun, I was even able to connect [the debate] to real world problems we face today. It made me think about the considerations that go on [regarding] the human genome. I want to be able to experiment and find new innovations for humanity.”
Freya Morgan & Talia Dixon
Our Lady of the Snows Catholic Academy
“There are hundreds of people who are kind of the same as you, and it’s so much fun because you will say the nerdiest thing where other people will say “Oh honey, you are such a nerd,” but they would say, ‘OMG I know right?’ It’s the best.
Personally, I think the experience is not as much about the project as it is about personal development and about learning and getting to know the world of science and everything it involves. This is not just lab work. And iGEM has been a huge part of me growing up and learning what I want and what I want to do when I grow older. If you ever have an opportunity to take part in iGEM in anyway, shape or form, do it. Even if it means working in a DIY lab where the incubator is made of tin foil and a light bulb like ours”
John Luke García
Rice University
“My family’s from the Philippines, but I was born and raised in McAllen, in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas -- think South Padre Island, then go west for an hour. Both of my parents are RNs now, but my dad was a physician back in the Philippines. While I didn’t want to go to med school, I still wanted to help people through medicine like my parents do, but go into research. My uncle, who is a physics prof in the Philippines, encouraged me to, in so many words, look into the intersection between biology, physics, and chemistry for the future of medicine. So, here I am -- the only physics major on the team! I’m really excited in what we decided to tackle this year, because there’ll be some cool physics shenanigans involved later in the project. And that, really, is what I love about iGEM and synthetic biology: that it allows for, and encourages, interdisciplinary approaches in creating products, with the power of biology, to better ourselves and the world around us.”
Inbal Adir
Technion university, Israel Institute of Technology
“At my university, the emphasis is often on the computer science side and less so on biology, and so I discovered the world of synthetic biology through iGEM. My favorite part of synthetic biology is the comparison to modern computers — it helps me understand this new world better and see both computers and biology in a different way. For me, it makes sense to see proteins and bacterias as a network of computers, and see how the comparison simplifies the complexity of biology systems. One day I would like to be part of an innovative invention, one that can change the way we think, for example coding pictures, files, or any other data into bacteria’s DNA so we can get endless space to store data and a platform that won’t break over time — like today’s computers. And if there is one sentence that I can say to the public, I would say that synthetic biology is already very common, and there is no reason to fear the future; bacteria should be man’s second best friend!”
