Team:Utah State/Team

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Team Members

Andrea Halling

Jamal Abdinor

Thomas Harris

Ryan Putman

Ryan is a Biological Engineering student entering his sophomore year at Utah State. He is involved in the Biological Engineering Club and has been participating in research in Dr. Jixun Zhan’s Metabolic Engineering Lab. His interests outside of the lab include basketball, weightlifting, and he used to be largely into chess. As it is his first year with iGEM, Ryan is looking forward to learning all of the basics and contributing in any way necessary to help the team succeed.

Brian Smith

Brian is a Junior in Biological Engineering, and this is his first year participating on the iGEM team. His personal research is centered in optimizing and reducing the cost of algal produced biodiesel. He enjoys spending time biking, running, and rock climbing and he also enjoys spending time with his family.

Elizabeth Martinez

Elizabeth Martinez recently obtained her bachelor’s degree in Biological Engineering from Utah State University. She is now pursuing a Master’s degree in Biological Engineering doing research with wastewater and algae to design a clarifier for the city of Logan Utah. Elizabeth was very eager to be for the first time part of the iGEM team this year. She became interested in synthetic biology after working months in her senior design project which consisted in transforming a yeast (Pichia pastoris), a eukaryotic organism, to produce and excrete green fluorescent protein (GFP). Elizabeth is originally from Mexico and apart from the lab and school she likes helping people and spending time with her loved ones.

Charles Barentine

Charles Barentine is an undergraduate in Biological Engineering at Utah State University. This is his second year as part of the iGEM team, and he hopes to make this one an even more enduring experience than the previous years. Charles loves being outdoors in Logan and spends his time outside of the lab rock climbing, hiking, snowboarding and anything else that involves moving about.

Federico Rodriguez

Federico Carlos Rodriguez is starting his junior year at USU. He is a transferred student from the Dominican Republic majoring in Biological Engineering and minoring in Math. He is actually participating in research regarding the spinning of synthetic spider silk. He likes playing sports, especially soccer, dancing, Latin music, and watching movies.

Kathleen Miller

Kathleen Miller is a junior at Logan High School in Logan Utah. She has been interested in biology and engineering for several years. This is her first year on the Utah State iGEM team. She is helping the team by performing general laboratory duties which include various molecular biological engineering techniques. She is an avid ski racer, All-State golfer, and is on the varsity basketball team.

Swetha Chandrasekar

Graduate Advisers

Asif Rahman

Asif is one of the graduate advisers. Currently, he is pursuing his PhD in Biological Engineering at Utah State University. His area of study is secretion based recovery of bioplastic from recombinant E.coli and scale-up of the process. Asif is from Auckland, New Zealand. He obtained his Bachelors in Chemical and Biological Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2009 and his Masters in Chemical and Material Engineering from the University of Auckland in 2010. Outside of the lab Asif plays cricket, swimming, and soccer. He also enjoys traveling.

Cody Tramp

Cody is a third-year Ph.D. student in Biological Engineering. He received a B.S. in Biology and B.S. in Biochemistry from Utah State University. His current research project focuses on expanding synthetic biological engineering techniques into cyanobacteria and developing a standardized system for manipulating the genome of these organisms. His career goals involve expanding the capacity of synthetic biological engineering to a full-genome scale. He considers himself a true lab rat, and enjoys spending the bulk of his time in the research lab. When not at the bench, he can be found in the library buried in a book or writing computer programs.

Joshua Ellis

Josh Ellis is a graduate advisor and a PhD student in Biological Engineering at USU. His dissertation research is focused on producing biogas and biofuels using methanogenic and solventogenic microbial populations respectively. Josh is from Idaho Falls, ID. He received his BS in Microbiology in 2008 and MS in Microbiology in 2010. He enjoys recreational activities, movies, books, and spending time with his family.

Cameron Copeland

Cameron Copealnd is in the second year of his PhD in Biological Engineering. His research is in the processing of synthetic spider silk protein, particularly in creating fibers from the proteins. He received his B.S. in Biological Engineering from Utah State. Cameron's interests includes racquetball, reading, board games and billards. For the last two years he has taught billiards classes at Utah State and has participated in several tournaments all over the west.

Instructors

Charles Miller

Charles Miller is an Assistant Professor of Biological Engineering. His research interests focus on cellular engineering, synthetic biological engineering, biosensors and bioremediation. Recent projects include using synthetic biological engineering techniques to improve bioplastic production, developing molecular tools in mycobacteria to create biosensors for use in bioremediation, the use of natural products as antimicrobials, and monitoring microbial diversity of bioreactors using metagenomic approaches.

Ronald Sims

Ron Sims has worked for Verona Division of Bayer Corporation in South Carolina as Environmental Control Laboratory Supervisor, for Research Triangle Institute, North Carolina as a Process Engineer addressing coal gasification and microbial metabolism of aromatic chemicals, and for the University of North Carolina as Director of the International Program in Environmental Aspects of Industrial Development before joining the faculty at Utah State University. He also worked at the U.S. EPA research laboratory at Ada, Oklahoma addressing bioremediation of hazardous waste contaminated soils and ground water. He is the former Director of the Utah Water Research Laboratory. His research interests include biochemical engineering processes for bioplastics and bioenergy production, and bioremediation of toxic and hazardous wastes. He has M.S. degrees in Environmental Chemistry and Biology (University of North Carolina School of Public Health) and Environmental Engineering (Washington State University), and the PhD degree in Biological and Agricultural Engineering (North Carolina State University). Dr. Sims is a recipient of the Utah Governor’s Medal for Science and Technology.

Dean H. Scott Hinton

H. Scott Hinton was born in Salt Lake City in 1951. He received a B.S.E.E. in 1981 at Brigham Young University and a M.S.E.E. at Purdue University in 1982. In 1981, he joined AT&T Bell Laboratories in Naperville, IL as a Member of the Technical Staff. He was promoted to supervisor of the Photonic Switching Technologies group in 1985 and then Head of the Photonic Switching Department in 1989. From 1992 to 1994, he was the BNR-NT/NSERC Chair in Photonic Systems at McGill University and from 1994 to 1999 he was the Hudson Moore Jr. Professor of Engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and finally from1999 to 2002 he was the Dean E. Ackers Distinguished Professor and the Chairman of University of Kansas Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department. In 2002, he accepted the position as the Dean of the College of Engineering at Utah State University. He has been very active in the scientific and engineering community where he has published over 35 journal articles and 85 conference papers. He has also been active in service to the professional community by serving in leadership positions for numerous technical conferences and workshops. Dean Hinton has also been awarded 12 patents. His current research is focused on developing systems applications of smart pixels and free-space optical interconnection, biophotonic systems, and in developing and understanding technology-enhanced learning environments. He was an IEEE-LEOS Distinguished Lecturer for 1993-94 and is a fellow of both the IEEE and OSA.

About Utah State University

Cache Valley of northern Utah is the home of Utah State University. Utah State has become nationally recognized in athletics and academics as it has grown from the small land grant Agricultural College it began as in 1888. Its undergraduate research program is the second oldest in the nation with more than a fourth of the undergraduate students involved in their own research. Utah State is on the cutting edge of research in engineering, and continues to excel in many disciplines.