Team 2015

Meet iGEM TU Eindhoven 2015!

Team members

Femke Vaassen – Biobricking & Gibson Assembly

Currently I am a third year student of the bachelor Biomedical Engineering. In the lab I will be focusing on the Gibson Assembly and BioBricking. I also will help with the modeling that needs to be done during this iGEM project. I joined this year’s iGEM team because I wanted to experience how it is to work on such a big project, from start to finish. I think iGEM is a really nice challenge for us as bachelor students. I hope that after we completed this project I have acquired some nice skills that I can use in the future and that I will be able to decide if the synthetic biology field is something I would like to specialize in.

 

 

Elles Elschot – Policy & Practices, Gibson Assembly

Currently I am in the third year of the bachelor Medical Sciences and Technology at the Eindhoven University of Technology. Together with Laura Jacobs I am responsible for the Policy & Practices part of our project. I am also helping the lab group with the Gibson Assembly. I joined the iGEM team because I am really interested in the field of synthetic biology and want to find out whether to specialize in this area in the future. I also think it is a great opportunity to do our own research project in this early stage of our study and hope to learn a lot from it.

 

 

Kwankwan Zhu – Money Maker

During the iGEM competition, I’m in charge of the sponsoring and I also take care of the Public Relations together with Hans. I really like the diversity of iGEM: the fact that we are not only working in a lab, but also go beyond this is what fascinates me. I enjoy being involved in many different tasks: working in the lab, designing logos or helping out with Human Practice. For me as a third year’s undergraduate of Biomedical Engineering, doing everything by our own made this experience more educational and unforgettable.

 

 

Cas van der Putten – Lab Captain, Moviemaker

This year I have the honorable job of lab captain, which means that I am responsible for the experiments and the overall progress in the lab. Besides this I also work at the cloning guide. Currently I am studying for my master’s degree at the faculty of Biomedical Engineering. During my bachelor I found out that the field of synthetic biology is very exciting. I joined the iGEM TU Eindhoven team this year because I think this is a great challenge and for me it is also a possibility to see what Biomedical Engineering and synthetic biology in special have to offer. Especially the combination of synthetic biology and model based engineering is nice to explore.

 

 

Sjoerd Nooijens – Wiki, Lab

Just like many of my teammates I am a third year Biomedical Engineering student in Eindhoven. Following my new motto “iGEM is love, iGEM is life” I have sacrificed increasingly more time to work on the project, resulting in many midnight work sessions with Hans. I have spent most of my summer hidden in the FACS lab or sitting behind my laptop working on the wiki, creating this memory for example. Filling the role of Jack of all trades I have also been involved in the sponsoring, model and the lab. Last but not least I have made sure our team reached the meme and pun quota every day.

 

 

Laura Jacobs – Policy & Practices, Interlab

Next year I will start my third year of the bachelor Medical Sciences and Technology. During the past two years I was introduced to the field of biochemistry, which started to interest me a lot. When the opportunity came to join the iGEM competition and learn more about synthetic biology, I was eager to participate. Together with Elles I am responsible for the Policy and Practices part of our project. And more recently I worked in the lab together with Esther and Laura van Smeden for the Interlab study of iGEM. The project forms a nice challenge and a memorable experience that I can hopefully benefit from in the future.

 

 

Laura van Smeden – Safety Expert, InterLab & Penpal

This year I am going to start with the third year of the bachelor Biomedical Engineering. I am the safety expert of this team and it is my responsibility that everyone has access to the lab and works safely. Together with Esther I filled in the safety forms. Furthermore I conducted the InterLab Study and communicated with our penpal Concordia. I have chosen to participate in the iGEM competition, because it is nice to work in a motivated team and it is a great opportunity to gain and better develop skills which will be useful in the future.

 

 

Yeshi de Bruin – Wiki & Lab

This year I will start my third year of the bachelor Medical Sciences & Technology. I decided to join this year’s iGEM team because I wanted to explore the field of synthetic biology and was up for a team challenge. My main responsibilities are building the wiki and some lab experiments. For example traditional cloning, FACS experiments etcetera. After this summer I hopefully gained a lot of knowledge and got a sneak peak in general research and the field of synthetic biology.

 

 

Hans de Ferrante – PR, Gibson Guru and Big Spender

At the moment I am a third year Biomedical Engineering student & second year Econometrics student. My iGEM adventure started with our second-year Molecular Cell Biology course, which provided us with insight into DNA recombinant technology, the promises of SynBio and last but not least, the iGEM competition. I was really appealed by both the field as well as the possibility to experience a full-blown research project, ranging from idea generation to doing real experiments in the lab. During our iGEM project, I wrote our Gibson protocols, was our treasurer and was responsible for public relations.

 

 

Esther van Leeuwen – Cloning guide, Interlab

Currently I am a second year student at the department Biomedical Engineering. The thing that intrigued me to join this year’s iGEM team was the opportunity for us to set up our own research project from scratch. Together with Laura van Smeden I am responsible for the safety of our project and in the lab I am working on the InterLab Study for iGEM. I am also the main contact person for the cloning guide that we are making in collaboration with other iGEM teams.

 

 

Jan-Willem Muller – Wiki, Bioluminescence, Modeling

I’m a third year’s Biomedical Engineering undergraduate student from the Eindhoven University of Technology. Within our iGEM-project I am mainly responsible for modeling, I’m part of the wiki team with Sjoerd and Yeshi and, whenever I had time, I measured bioluminescence in the lab. Joining the iGEM-team was definitely a good decision. I have always been very interested in synthetic biology and the iGEM competition came just at the right moment. Working for almost a year with this team, I have made a lot of new friends and gained many new academic skills and knowledge about synthetic biology.