Team:Ryerson Toronto/Team
Team
Riza Unabia
4th Year
Riza is a fourth year Biomedical Sciences student at Ryerson University. She was part of the winning team of Ryerson’s annual Chemistry and Biology (CaB) Challenge, which gave them the opportunity to join the iGem competition. She was motivated to win upon learning that iGem focuses on the expansion and innovation of synthetic biology. She always found synthetic biology fascinating with the various creations of parts that can be assembled together to create novel and efficient systems applicable to various sectors (medicine, energy, etc.).
She is a Policies and Practices member of the Ryerson team focusing on public outreach and engagement, as well as a member of the Wiki page development. She is ecstatic to work alongside driven peers and will always keep an open and inquisitive mind to learn more from others. In her spare time, she loves to hike, explore nature, and go on road trips. She’s a major lover of ice cream and would like to try all the flavours in the world. Aside from a successful healthcare career, her other ultimate goals are to visit at least 10 countries in her lifetime as well as go on a week-long roadtrip.
Nathan Battersby
4th Year
Nathan is a fourth year Biology student at Ryerson University. He is the Policies and Practices lead of Ryerson’s iGem team. He is interested in research and would like to start with synthetic biology. Given that, he would like to develop his understanding around the potentials of the subject and how it can change the game for production and resource extraction. He believes that most of the world’s problems can be solved using synthetic biology and that humanity just needs to apply the existing tools.
He is highly interested in science communication and would like to see the Toronto community become more scientifically literate about synthetic biology. He has worked on a previous 2015 cyanobacteria grant application, which has also formed the basis for the current iGem project. In his own personal time, Nathan loves to watch and play hockey while also thinking of ways to make biological wings for humans as his next cool science development.
Tanya Aziz
4th Year
Tanya is currently completing her fourth year Biomedical Science program at Ryerson University. She was a member of the winning CaB challenge team in Ryerson and wants to try her hand in research through iGem. She is interested in the fact that organisms that aren’t visible to the human eye are able to produce useful commercial products. She hopes to gain valuable research experience and improve her presentation skills by participating in the iGem jamboree.
She is a member of the Policies and Practices team and the lead for the team’s public outreach and workshops. Her creativity is valued in organizing interactive activities in order to increase public awareness regarding synthetic biology. Her creativity also interests her in creating a fashion-fornward and stylish vegan clothing from waste products. Tanya is a self-proclaimed treehugger and would love to use synthetic biology to do something good for the environment. In her spare time, she loves to watch tearjerker movies while eating pickles with Nutella.
Donnie Stangroom
4th Year
Donald Stangroom is a chemistry major at Ryerson University. His hobbies include reading, skateboarding and an amateur chemistry YouTube channel. Donald was motivated to join the igem team because an opportunity to work with synthetic biology, which has so many potential applications, seemed like a good one. His previous research experience includes working in an organic synthesis lab and helping to create a synthetic biology proposal for Ontario Genomics. He would eventually like Science to to fully understand the mechanism behind driver-less cars to hep cut down on accidents. He is highly interests in synthetic biology and its many applications from manufacturing to energy, all while maintaining “green” products. In the end, he hopes to gain experience using synthetic biology to synthesize novel and interesting organic molecules from this project.
Reeda Mahmood
4th Year
Reeda is in her fourth year completing her Biomedical Sciences program at Ryerson University. She learned of the iGem competition last summer and thought it was an awesome opportunity to incorporate to the existing CaB challenge in Ryerson. Synthetic biology is an exciting field and she hopes for Ryerson Science undergraduates to play a part in its growth. By participating she hopes to learn more about research and gain a better understanding of the wonders of directing genetic machinery in a bacterial cell.
Reeda is Ryerson’s iGem team lead and a member of the wet lab team. She has a great interest in science outreach highlighted through previous events she has helped organized. One of which aimed to break the record for the longest DNA model in the world, which was a success! She likes to learn calligraphy on her spare time and would like someone to invent a teleportation machine that can help her commute to school.
Aesha Patel
4th Year
Aesha is a fourth year Biology Student at Ryerson University. She is highly interested in synthetic biology for its infinite applications and the way it can be used as solutions to a wide range of problems. For her, synthetic biology is essentially a lego factory for scientists. If you can dream it, it can (most likely) be engineered. She hopes to get Ryerson’s name into the scientific community and raise the interest for the field of synthetic biology. This way, the public can gain a better appreciation for this emerging field.
Aesha is the team’s all-rounder from managing lab work, organizing outreach activities and developing the Wiki page. It gets pretty hectic but it is a way for her to learn a bit of everything. Her skills are a result of her previous volunteering experiences at a Botany and Molecular Biology Lab at Ryerson and her current co-op term at the Princess Margaret Cancer Research Tower. In the future, she hopes to establish a way to grow all plants in harsh conditions (maybe even Mars?) to address the problem on world hunger. She loves reading, biking, and (now) watching Star Trek. She is also a fan of FRIENDS, so ask her a trivia and she got the answer.
Cristina ThuppuMudalige
4th Year
