Team:William and Mary/team
Kalen is a junior studying biology and applied mathematics. The interdisciplinary nature of our project appeals to
her desire to blend her interests. Kalen believes the intersection of disciplines is a great source for innovation.
She became interested in science and research at a young age. Her continued interest
in constructing and designing things has driven her to pursue a career in bioengineering. Eventually she sees herself
researching evolutionarily optimized biological structures so that their design can be replicated when engineering
biological and non-biological structures. Outside of the lab, Kalen spends her time tutoring elementary students,
watching movies, and playing volleyball.
Ethan is a sophomore pursuing a B.S. in Biology and Computational & Applied Mathematics & Statistics. For as
long as he can remember he’s always wanted to be a scientist both because of his love of learning and because
of his desire to change the world. Ethan was especially excited to work on iGEM this summer because synthetic
biology is a relatively young field and there is a lot that we don't know yet. Additionally, synthetic biology
is a field that has a lot of potential to change the future of medicine and the world at large. In his spare
time Ethan enjoys perusing local culture forums to consume and create various image and text based communications,
as well as learning highly specific useless facts and playing tennis.
Likhitha is a junior pursuing Biology and Chemistry. She joined the team to work with students who approach
a scientific challenge differently from the way she might so that she can develop a well rounded view of the
gray area in STEM and think like a mathematician, physicist, computer scientist, biologist, and chemist all
at once. Likhitha wants to continue her synthetic biology journey into medical research, which is why the
overlap between synthetic biology and biomedicine motivates her to push existing boundaries to build circuits
that could for example design microbes that assist cell-based immunotherapy.
Joe is a junior majoring in Computational & Applied Mathematics & Statistics. Last year he was a member
of the 2015 W&M iGEM team. As we have a young team this year, Joe oversees the day-to-day wetlab operations
and keeps things running smoothly. He is excited for the future prospects of iGEM as an institution that
embodies both creativity and scientific rigor at William & Mary.
Team
Kalen Clifton
Ethan Jones
Likhitha Kolla
Joe Maniaci
