Team:Columbia-Cooper-NYC/Team

Advisors:

• Advisor 1: Mentor for all
• Advisor 2: Our favorite
• Grad Student 1: Our leader

Undergrads:

When he’s not obsessively watching American Idol videos or playing tunes on his guitar, Aakash Mansukhani studies chemical engineering at Columbia University. As a rising sophomore, Aakash hopes that participating in IGEM will help him learn more about how principles from chemical engineering and synthetic biology can be combined to program bacteria. In his free time, Aakash loves to sing and reinvent pop songs by putting his own acoustic spin on them.

Team member 1

Akachi is a rising Sophomore at Columbia University. Her potential major is Chemical Engineering. She was interested in IGEM because she wanted to learn about the many ways she can apply what she is being taught in school to real world problems. Akachi also enjoys watching soap operas.

Pnina is a rising sophomore at The Cooper Union. She is currently in the BSE track there (with a possibility of switching to mechanical engineering), and hopes to specialize in biomedical engineering. IGEM seemed like a great opportunity to get some real hands-on experience in study of biology and problem-solving combined.

Naimun is a rising Sophomore at Columbia University. He began the year as a Physics major and changed to Biomedical Engineering followed up by a change to Electrical Engineering to Applied Physics and finally, to Chemical Engineering. IGEM seemed like an opportunity for him to learn more about some of the applications of engineering and its consequences. Naimun loves reading about theoretical physics and hopes to die in a black hole one day.

Sara just finished her third year as a Chemical Engineer at Columbia University. She is interested in pharmaceuticals and protein engineering. IGEM was particularly appealing, because she wanted a chance to pursue a fun application of synthetic biology. Sara also enjoys super hero movies.