Attributions

iGEM at Stony Brook would like to thank the following people and organizations for their hand in helping us realize our project.

Advisors

Our project advisors: Dr. J. Peter Gergen, Dr. Joshua Rest, Dr. Gabor Balazsi, Dr. Jarrod French, and Dr. Steven Glynn, for all their advice and guidance throughout the entirety of our project along with help in designing our constructs.

iGEM Reading Course

Members from previous Stony Brook iGEM teams assisted us over the spring by acting as teaching assistants (TAs) for our iGEM reading course. These TAs include Nick Roig, Brian Yang, Chloe Savino, Chris Guiliano, Fatima Maqsood, Julianna Casella, Lyle Suh, Megan Schiesser, Ridee Raquib, Ryan Kawlerski, Timothy Darby, and Jerin Thomas. Through the reading course, our team learned about the iGEM competition and the expectations associated with it. The weekly meetings were used to create a project and develop it through the help of the TAs who presented on what iGEM was and imparted their knowledge and experience. We are thankful for the TA’s continuing to aid us through the summer when needed!

General Research Support

Mary Bernero is the Head Curator of the Undergraduate Biology Program, and was an amazing help in teaching us how to use the autoclave and gave us much needed advice regarding lab equipment

Nancy Black is the Assistant Director of the Undergraduate Biology Program, and was a great source of help throughout our project regarding administrative duties, donation and fundraising, and shipping and ordering materials.

Michael Li is a third year graduate student in the Stony Brook Centers for Molecular Medicine, and took the time to teach us how to use the plate reader essential for InterLab, our sucrose experiments, and luciferase experiments.

Mary Lou Previti is a researcher in the Stony Brook Centers for Molecular Medicine, and was happy to give us a crash course on PCR and advice when we asked for help on laboratory techniques; namely gel electrophoresis and PCR purification. She also taught us how to use the NanoDrop machine, which we used regularly.

Dr. Mahajan is a professor and Graduate Program Director of our Chemical Engineering Department and helped us recognize the future potential of our project, how landfills could be involved, and advised us with his renowned expertise on the subject.

Dr. Iwasaki is a postdoctoral researcher in the Stony Brook Centers for Molecular Medicine, and was a great resource in troubleshooting issues with sequencing and with general E. coli culturing and protocols.

Mirna is a researcher in Dr. Balazsi’s lab, who was instrumental in helping us design our constructs to undergo Gibson Assembly by providing assistance in designing overhangs. Furthermore, she helped teach us how to use SnapGene's Hi-Fi Assembly feature among others that were crucial in work throughout the summer. She was also a member of the 2015 iGEM Team.

Cyanobacteria Help & Human Practices

John Aikens

Dr. Aikens, former CEO of Proterro, was kind enough to join us during a Skype call early on in our project and informed us of issues in the field of cyanobacterial transformation and in sucrose production.

Michael Axelrod

Michael Axelrod is the Greenhouse Curator and Instructional Support Specialist for Stony Brook University, and lent us a Photosynthetically Active Radiation (PAR) meter which we used to determine our lighting conditions.

Brian Baynes

Dr. Baynes, former CEO of Joule Unlimited, with a PhD in Chemical Engineering, discussed with us various experimental strategies as well as the challenges of using cyanobacteria to produce alkanes. He helped develop the real world application of the project with regards to biofuel and environmental plastic.

Jackie Collier

Dr. Collier, Associate Professor with PhD in Biological Sciences, helped with growing and culturing our cyanobacteria and showed us her set up so that we could see how cyanobacteria is usually grown. She helped us grow our initial cultures of cyanobacteria while we were still getting set up in our lab for the summer.

Daniel Ducat

Dr. Ducat, Assistant Professor with a PhD in Biology, provided us with advice on the cscB gene and confirmed the advantages of using Gibson Assembly in construct design.

Susan Golden

Professor with PhD in genetics, offered advice regarding the luciferase promoters and answered our many questions about her cyanobacterial vectors.

McKenna Hicks

McKenna, former member of the 2017 UCSC iGEM Team, answered our questions in regards to her project last year which involved cyanobacteria, giving us information about misoriented terminators in pAM1579 and gave culturing tips.

Hung (Martin) Li

Martin, PhD student of Professor Hu, the first researcher to use CRISPR-Cas9 in our cyanobacteria, helped us decide whether we would use CRSIPR-Cas9 in our project design.

Monique Richards

Monique, our Promega representative, helped us in ordering our Promega products and answered all questions pertaining the products. She also helped us troubleshoot any issues with Promega.

Neil Warner

Neil warner is the Director of Transportation and Parking at Stony Brook University. We discussed the challenges of implementing alternative fuels into society while competing with traditional fuels such as diesel.

Zahid Syed

Mr. Syed is a politician in East Meadows, New York whose active role in human rights issues helped us understand the application of our research in society. He gave us logistical challenges we would face outside of the lab, but assured us that our project can potentially end world hunger.

Laura Curran

Ms. Laura Curran is the Nassau County Executive. She and her staff graciously met with our team to discuss the political implications of our project.

Abigail Sison

Ms. Sison is our team's HQ representative and was extremely forthcoming if we had any questions.

Alicia Magnanon

Ms. Magnanon is our team's iGEM mentor and met with us monthly over Skype to discuss aspects of our project. She gave us a lot of advice on how to improve our wiki.

Attributions

Advisors

iGEM Reading Course

General Research Support

Cyanobacteria Help & Human Practices

Sponsors

2018 Stony Brook iGEM

Contacts

Links