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Team:Duke/Team
From 2012.igem.org
Click the link below to see the Attributions section and how each member of the 2012 Duke iGEM Team contributed to the Team Project!
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Team Leaders
Param Sidhu
Param is a native of Chapel Hill, North Carolina and is interested in pursuing a career in medicine in the future. As a highly motivated biomedical research intern, Param has sought out a variety of research opportunities in the fields of chemistry, public health and synthetic biology. On top of participating in scientific research Param is a varsity athlete and has competed with the NCSSM's Varsity Basketball and Tennis Teams. Param is generally a jovial fellow and also enjoys listening to hip-hop and rap music, web design, tutoring other students, and devising multifarious assays. He has established his own SAT tutoring company, 2300 Plus, (http://chapelhillsat.org/index.html) and plans on donating the proceeds to help pay for improvements to his current high school. He is a music lover and a firm believer in the philosophy that anyone can be made to dance with the right bands.
Morgan Howell
Morgan Howell is from Norwood, North Carolina and currently attends The North Carolina School of Science and Math in Durham. Morgan, being a senior this year, is currently president of NCSSM iGEM. As president of several clubs, a resident advisor, and athlete, Morgan commends research as his ultimate passion. Morgan's experiences within his formal rural community have motivated him to pursue study and research in medical genetics as a career. Honing his skills in computational science, Morgan is also an avid programmer. Morgan committed over 600 hours of lab time towards the collegiate Duke iGEM project this summer and looks forward to competing in Pittsburgh.
Mentors
Dr. Charles A. Gersbach
Dr. Gersbach received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2001. In 2006 he graduated with a Ph. D. in Biomedical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology & Emory University and went on to do Postdoctoral work in the field of Molecular and Chemical Biology at the Scripps Research Institute from 2007 to 2009. Currently Dr. Gersbach is an associate professor in Duke University's Biomedical Engineering Department. His research interests are in gene therapy, biomolecular and cellular engineering, regenerative medicine, and synthetic biology.
Dr. Nicolas Buchler
Dr. Buchler originally hails from Gainesville, Florida but received his B.S. in Physics from the far off University of California - San Diego in 1995. In 1998 he received his M.S. in Biophysics from the University of Michigan and went on to earn his Ph.D. ,also in the Biophysics and from the University of Michigan, in 2001. Currently Dr. Buchler is an associate professor in Duke University's Biology and Physics Departments. His research interests are in the Molecular mechanisms and the evolution of switches and oscillators in gene networks, systems biology, and comparative genomics.
Undergraduates
Peter Fan
Peter is a veteran of iGEM having been one of three high school students on the 2011 Duke iGEM team. He co-founded and co-lead his high school's (NCSSM) first iGEM Team in 2012 and the team enjoyed great success, placing 2nd place at the international High School iGEM Competition and winning an honorable mention for best new biological part--natural. He enjoys designing and then testing novel synthetic gene circuits, especially when they work. His interests outside of science include martial arts, street dance, and eating at Cosmics Cantina and other restaurants around Durham. He currently attends UNC-Chapel Hill and is working with professors to start a synthetic biology program (as well as an UNC-CH iGEM Team) for the coming years.
Other Lab Members
Although not official team members the team is indebted to the help, support, and mentorship of the lab members of Buchler Lab and Gersbach Lab, particularly Anyimilehidi Mazo-Vargas, Tony Burnetti, Charlie Cooper, Selcan Tuncay, Sargis Karapetyan, David Winski, and Heungwon Park. We don't know where we'd be today without your patient mentorship.
Tucker Lab of UC Denver
We would like to thank the Tucker lab of UC Denver for providing us with the the two-hybrid proteins and accompanying plasmids that we used in our work. (The constructs we cloned were derivatives of her lab's original work.)
