My name is Emma Finlayson-Trick and I am a fourth year student at Dalhousie University majoring in microbiology and immunology and minoring in history. Last year was my first time on the Dalhousie iGEM team as ethics consultant and this year I am the president. I originally began university thinking that eukaryotic cells were the most fascinating things out there, and not to anger anyone who agrees with that statement, but I am now a prokaryote fan after learning about the many marvelous abilities and complexities of these curious cells. I hope to pursue a career as a clinical microbiologist and I am particularly fascinated in exploring antibiotic resistance.

My name is Landon Getz. I am an aspiring researcher and microbiology student at Dalhousie University. Having watched the iGEM team last year, and taking a few classes in synthetic biology, I decided I wanted to try my own hand at it. So here I am. My task with our iGEM team this year, with the help of Mackenzie Thornbury, is to sequence some 16S rRNA genes and discover what microbes are found in the gut of the porcupine. I am also the main web designer for this years team. I am looking forward to continuing our porcupine research and hopefully finding some interesting microorganisms in the process!

My name is Mackenzie Thornbury and I am a fourth year Microbiology and Immunology student at Dalhousie University. I first heard about iGEM last year and was really interested in their project and also synthetic biology as a whole. We have very little classes that focus on synthetic biology so I joined the team in order to learn new techniques and see what synthetic biology was all about.

My name is Shayne Gracious and I am entering my third year at Dalhousie completing my undergraduate degree in chemistry with a minor in mathematics. I was first exposed to the concept of genetic engineering in my first year of undergraduate studies through the Dalhousie Integrated Science Program. Since then the topic has continuously peaked my interest particularly through recent progressive studies in CRISPR. As a chemist my main interests lies around the applications of synthetic biology in the field of chemistry, such as the use of enzymes to overcome challenging metabolic pathways or introducing new reaction mechanisms to produce complex molecules. I am excited to be part of the iGEM team this year!

My name is Nicholas Boudreau. As of this coming fall I will be a second year microbiology student at Dalhousie university. I am studying to become a researcher in the field of viral gene-therapy. As one of the most novice members of this team, my primary role is to help other team members where needed as well as use my proficiency in JavaScript to design some aspects of the website. I will be contributing heavily to the Shubenacadiw Microbiome Map. I also used my proficiency in JavaScript to help create the team’s webpage.

My name is Lois Murray. I earned my PhD in Microbiology at Dalhousie University and post-doc'd at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. In both of these positions I learned cell and molecular biology techniques that I use to further my research on regulation of development in yeast. Synthetic biology is fascinating to me in that it has led researchers to discover systems that we didn't know existed in bacterial cells and use them in interesting ways to ask important questions in other cell types. Working with the iGEM team is of interest to me because I like to be involved in guiding students as they pursue their research into areas of gene regulation. I am so amazed and impressed by our iGEM group members as each student brings an interesting set of skills and perspectives to thinking about this project. Team work and communication are the core to generating new ideas!

My name is Jamie Cook and I am one of Dalhousie’s iGEM team mentors. I am a new master’s student at Dalhousie University, and I am interested in bacterial-host interactions. I just recently graduated from the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton with an honours degree in biology, concentrations in microbiology and molecular biology, and a minor Psychology. I am very interested in synthetic biology because I believe it is a greener method to produce chemicals compared to previous methods, which generated harmful by-products. I also find it fascinating how we can use bacteria such as E. coli, and use them as mini factories to generate desired chemicals.