Team:Hong Kong HKUST/The Team
The Team
Carol Shiu
The female half of the lovebird pair in our team. As a team member, she works closely with her team and perform each and every task perfectly, from her lab duties to the seminar organised for secondary school students. She is all the more efficient when she gets paired up with Eric, the other lovebird. Each and every gesture and posture that she makes resembles much that of a typical senhora, so elegant and graceful.
Cynthia Chui Shan Kwok
Cynthia is a girl that loves to laugh. She would have been a very bad ninja as her tracks would be uncovered when you hear her laughing in a distance. She is also a very nice and reliable friend to have, both inside and outside the lab. She will gladly stand in for a friend in need and sweep up the responsibilities left by a sick friend. Some say that she is a bunny-reincarnate, supported by the fact that she loves bunnies and behaves like one, with cuteness to spare ;).
Danson Shek Chun Loi
A lazy gentleman. He is nice in that he would sometimes help you before you even ask for it with simple things like getting a glass of water or carrying your luggage. Otherwise, he’s like a sloth and can spend the whole day in bed if he isn’t required elsewhere. Despite that, he is stick thin and quite possibly the lightest member in the whole team. He is a dedicated member of our team, often sacrificing sleep and food to work on our wiki page.
Eric Chung Ting Tsoi
Being one of the lovebirds in our lab, he never hesitates to showcase his fondness and tenderness towards the other lovebird. Although it feels like they turn all of us into light bulbs (Cantonese slang for playing gooseberry) which gives us goose bumps sometimes, we light bulbs are still dimmer than the halo surrounding them. Nonetheless, he is an exceptionally caring and accommodating nice guy to all of us. When you get panicked and ossified with failed lab results, he can always calm you down by looking into the possible problems with you, no wonder his girlfriend’s heart got captivated!
Gary Ka Wing Yuen
An active participant yet sometimes careless. He contributed to one of the proposal ideas which is about electric e.coli yet did not get to work out regrettably. Being one of the members in the modelling group, he studies really hard to ensure himself understand all the equations and concepts so that he can explain to the rest of us afterwards. By the way, let me tell you something, he is extraordinarily kind to his girlfriend in that he never goes Dutch when it comes to dating expenses.
Janice Man Jing Wong
She is always willing to learn, work and contribute, which makes her one of the valuable members in our team. While others are arguing for whatever reasons, she is always the first one going back to work and leaving us behind. Not only is she a hard-working member, she is also willing to take up extra duties with the most justifiable reason: I’m free anyway.
Joyce On Ki Wong
The Learner. Joyce is a very hardworking and diligent person. She always asks anybody else if she has any doubts or questions. She is very humble and her presence always brings joy and happiness. She’s talkative and very interested in psychology! Also, we don’t need to worry about running out of LB or LB plates if she’s around!
Kaitlin Hao Yi Chan
The Lab Mum. Kaitlin is our lovely lab mum! She brings lots of food to make sure everyone’s well fed. She’s also very responsible and talented in troubleshooting any problems that happened in the lab. As an experienced member in handling lab work, she’s very detailed and careful in doing everything. Besides, she’s also a good teacher, that’s more than willing to teach anyone who asks her questions about what’s going on in the lab. Kait is Luna’s partner in crime, and she is very cute, especially when she tries to speak in Cantonese, her voice will sound higher.
Karen Kar On Cheng
Karen is our team leader. Despite that, she is easy to approach and always willing to help other members. She is always the first to enter the lab and the last to leave. Thanks to her, we don’t need to worry about running out of reagents as she is always on top of replenishing supplies. In the lab, she has been very patient with us, always replying “should be okay…” whenever we’re unsure or stressed out about something. She is responsible with keeping track of the team’s progress.
Leona Long Ching Lai
Leona is a very devoted member of the project. The leader of one of the three module groups, she practises tough love on her group mates. She has a pretty loud voice so it might sometimes sound like she's being harsh but everyone knows she doesn't mean it. The most valuable trait of her is that she always tries to do beyond her responsibility and never cares about claiming credit, from planning daily experimental procedures to preparing materials for weekly presentations. We all appreciate her very much.
Luna Eresta Jaya
The Teacher. Luna is a great teacher and leader. She’s very organized and quite perfectionist in her work. She is clear about what to do in the next step and focus on how to modify experiments in order to get a more reliable and persuasive result. Every day in the lab becomes smoother and easier because of the Workflow Plan that she initiated for our group. She’s also very good in delegating work for other people while considering their strengths and weaknesses. Besides, she’s secretly a quite sensitive and careless person, but she’s very professional when it comes to work. She also loves to tell jokes (although some of them are not funny) and take good photo of our team so that we can leave behind wonderful memories.
Mike Dorothea
She is a very well organised people and very responsible. She always asks us for the content we need to present before the general meeting and then send the email. It is lucky for us to have her to be our secretary. Also, she is good at using photoshop and other software and is willing to teach us to use it. It helps a lot when we need to design a team logo and t-shirt. And she loves singing, she always sing when she is waiting for the PCR or gel.
Olivia Winata
The Gel Loader. Olivia, or usually called OW, is super helpful and responsible in everything. She is very good in handling any work in the busiest days in the lab, she’s also known as the gel loader due to her talent in it. Her hobby in the lab is filling pipette tips box, while singing. Basically she sings every time there’s any waiting time in doing lab work, even during heat shock or cold shock. Funny thing about her is her panic response. Whenever she suddenly finds out something wrong, she will say “eh.. eh..” with a slightly louder voice.
Raymon Rui Chen
Raymon spends a lot of time studying and aiding the work in modelling for the tri-stable switch. Moreover, he is always willing to provide help to people who are short in hands. He is the kind of person that you want to work as a partner since he is hard-working and willing to pursuit an accurate and reliable result which often requires more work. All in all, Raymon is a reliable and undoubtedly valuable member to the team.
Sharon Suet Man Lai
The Laugher. Sharon is a very cheerful and humble person. She is a bit quiet and reserved when you first meet her, but she will be talkative once you’ve known her. She is hard-working when she’s in the lab, but you will only be able to meet her coming in the afternoon (P.S.: she cannot wake up early in the morning). She’s also talented in designing logo and other publication materials.
Soo Kyung Shin
Soo is a Korean girl. Though she is the only Korean girl in the team, she would never feel lonely due to her adorable personality. Wearing a cheerful smile all the time, she makes everyone want to be close with her. Let me tell you a secret - she is even described as an angel, and I am sure you know the reasons behind.
Steven Shing Yiu Fu
Steven is a diligent gentleman. He devoted a lot of time in experiments, modeling and designing the Wiki page. He is always very helpful and he never complain. (Don't ask me how he does it.) He might look cool but he is actually friendly when you talk to him.
Tiffany Tze Wing Mak
Tiffany is a very smart and responsible teammate who actively participates in and helps with planning every aspect of the project. A critical thinker; she's always able to come up with new ways to troubleshoot our experiments. To most people, she appears to be a very serious no-nonsense kind of person. However, once she warms up, she has a pretty silly side too. Her responses to extreme stress can be pretty unpredictable and often hilarious (she'd once thrown her shoe at somebody). Her behaviour changes to suit the situation and people around her. Despite acting like a big sister most of the time, with some people, she can be childish and playful too.
Victor Tsz Chun Tsang
Victor is a prudent and responsible experimenter in our laboratory. He is wonderful to work with, an absolute professional at all times. While designing an experiment, he is the one who can take all necessary details into consideration. In addition, he has a sense of humor, which always cheer us up when we meet difficulties.
Winnie Yan Wa Ho
The Wonder Woman/Lifesaver. Winnie is very efficient when it comes to work. Either in the lab, or in Graphic Design team. She can do a lot of things in a short time. She’s also very diligent in naming gel photos and keeping them tidy (the lifesaver of our presentations). Other modules should be jealous of pTet for having Winnie in the team!
Alice Wang Qingyang
Alice is one of the smartest person we have around. She had given us constant encouragement in Modelling, MATLAB coding, and when we encounter difficulties in lab work. She also teaches us how to face challenges with optimism when we face challenges. We sure miss her a lot when she exchanged to Cornell in the Fall semester.
Bonnie Park Hojeong
Bonnie is a kind and amiable person. She always carry with her a big smile and you will find her comfortable to talk with. She loves cats very much and when you find drawings of cats in the lab, we can be 99.999% sure that it was done by her. Having Bonnie as one of the advisor in this year is definitely a pleasure for us.
Edward Ng Siu Wang
Being a final year student but his first year as an advisor (3rd year as iGEM member), Edward devoted a lot of his time to our training at the very beginning despite being busy at his internships and studies. He is the first choice that you would go to when you have uncertainties about lab work in mind since he would always answer you in a very gentle way with extraordinary patience. When you feel daunted or discouraged by your experimental progress or performance, he is also the one telling you not to mind as long as you learn from your mistakes.
Eric Cheung Ming Fung
The lab psychopath. Eric is the team leader of last year’s iGEM team and a first-time advisor this year. He would always question us on our interpretation of our lab results, regardless of if they are positive or not, but that’s just because he wants us to think critically. He may seem difficult to get along with at first due to his constant poker face. However, he does show a quirky side once in a (long) while. His advice is generally helpful and often helps add onto our knowledge. He is crazy in the way that he will only have lunch if his experiments fail, what a lab maniac!
Felicia Samin
Feli is an Indonesian Junior majoring in Chemical Engineering. She is a cheerful and a joyful person, basically she laughs a lot. She loves animals so much that she once had a peculiar pet- a kangaroo!! A great friend who is there whenever anyone needs help of any sort.
Justin Chan Lok Chun
Justin is a nice guy. He is always willing to teach us as much as he can. Most would describe him as patient, smart and charismatic. One of the reasons why he can teach so well is because he listens to us and tries to see things from our perspective. He is patient to everyone as he understands why some may not catch on as quickly. He has a very sharp mind with a quick response time. Interesting ideas often come from him and he’s always eager to share them with us just as how he’s receptive of our ideas. Every action and word from him oozes with charisma and that’s how he captivates us without even trying.
Mona Siu Men Yi
Mona is a final year Biochemistry and Cell biology student who joined the HKUST-Rice iGEM Team last year. As an advisor this year, she was involved in every tutorial and training offered to new comers just to ensure we all could gain a correct and thorough understanding of Synthetic Biology. She must be the best “lecturer” in that she always teaches you from the very basics. When we were presenting our weekly progress report, she could always raise thought-provoking questions which directly address the crux of the problem we encountered. One thing to note is that we are all very much impressed by how she aces academically, as there have been rumours of her getting A+ in exams simply by skimming through the textbook!!
Medina Cuellar Raul Guillermo
This is the fourth year Raul involves in iGEM, yet his second year as an advisor. Being the most experienced advisor, he contributes most of his spare time to assisting our project works despite his heavy burden from his final year project. He is very popular in the sense that we always flock to him whenever we get our results failed. Besides, He is the most noticeable person in the lab, his distinct scent of cologne always catches your nerves at the very first moment he walks in.
Sabrina Tam Ka Man
Sabrina is one of our best advisors. She has taught us so many things in the lab and also in theory. She taught and explained everything to us patiently when we first came to the lab. In the meetings, she always tries to give good advice so we have better results in our project. When we failed, she helped us solve the problem by giving suggestions about what should we do next. We are very pleased to have her as our mentor.
Samiha TASNIM Khandaker
Samiha is one of the sweetest and most approachable advisors. Whenever she bumps into any of us, she’ll always ask us how we’re coping with the project and give much-needed encouragements. She likes the computer barn a lot along with other quiet places in the school. Sometimes, you’ll even see her loitering around the corridors. She’s really good with styling hair and that’s why every day is a good hair day for her.
Stephanie Yiu Pei Tung
The Lab Mum, in the sense of reliability. Stephanie was one of the leading members of last year's HKUST-Rice iGEM Team and this is her first year as an advisor coaching us rookie members from design of experiment to wet lab practice. Although she is doing her final year with her own Final Year Project lab work, she still spares practically all of her time to assisting in our project in whatever aspect that she is capable of helping. We all feel sorry for her sometimes in that she always helps in the shadow way beyond our imagination. With the greatest gratitude in heart, wish her every success in her years ahead.
Thomas LEE Ho Yin
Thomas is a smart person. His wit always gives way to intelligence and problem solving skills. He is a very hard-working and diligent person. Although he has jobs in other labs and is not always present in the iGEM lab, he is always willing to give useful advices to all other team members, be it lab work or auxiliary duties. He brings joy to the lab with his interesting jokes. I would really put some light on his soft skills, that is presenting himself in public. I wish him best of luck and I am sure, he would definitely find success in life.
Prof. King Lau Chow
Division of Life Science & Biomedical Engineering, HKUST
King L. Chow is currently Director of Interdisciplinary Programs Office. His research work spans a broad spectrum of biological sciences, includes molecular genetics, neural developmental biology, evolution of behavior and synthetic biology, with many different interdisciplinary collaboration. He engaged in iGEM activities for the past 8 years and sees it a very effective way of vertically integrated education.
Dr. Jessica Ce Mun Tang
Division of Life Science, HKUST
Dr.Tang has been joining the iGEM team as an instructor for the seventh year. Prior to joining iGEM, most of the members, especially those from life science disciplines, are already familiar with her since their first year as she is the course instructor for General Biology. She never puts on airs and has always treats us like more than a student of hers. Just like the lyrics, "Let this be our lesson in love. Let this be the way we remember us."
