Project Attributions

We would like to thank the many people at the University of Oxford and elsewhere without whom our project would not have been possible.

Special Thanks

Dr. George Wadhams

Dr. Wadhams has been there for our team since its formation in January. He was essential in helping us assess the viability of our initial ideas and later tailoring our final one that became our project. He has also been there for us during our time in the lab giving us introductions to the cloning protocols we have used.

Dr. Nicolas Delalez

Dr. Delalez has been essential to the success of our team in the lab. He has been our first and last line for help troubleshooting our wet lab problems. He also helped the team learn how to use the fluorescence microscope and plate reader.

Professor Judy Armitage

Professor Judy Armitage, who has been invaluable to iGEM at Oxford, has been kind enough to let us use her lab over the summer.

Associate Professor Maike Bublitz

A special thanks to Professor Maike Bublitiz who gave us purified TEV protease to help test the components of our system. She also was kind enough to give a quick introduction to the team on using Nickel NTC columns and using the cell disrupter.

Professor Mike Bonsall

Mike Bonsall was essential in the making of our disease model. He taught us about fundamental principles of a disease model, including how to make a basic SIR model. He also directed us to relevant reading so that we were later able to create our own disease model for the epidemiology of Chagas disease with and without our diagnostic tool.

Professor Antonis Papachristodoulou

Professor Papachristodoulou has been very helpful to the modellers on the team, giving them introductions to the ODE and stochastic mo guiding them in the general areas of the ODE and the stochastic models.

Harrison Steel

Harrison Steel regularly advised the modelling aspects of the project helping the modellers with the minutiae of the stochastic model.

Additional Thanks

• Professor Cristina Alonso-Vega, who informed the team about the approach towards diagnostic and treatment of Chagas disease in Bolivia
• Sam Bannon, who helped our team prepare and run their first SDS protein gels
• Professor Jaila Dias Borges Lalwani, who directed us towards applying our diagnostic to Bolivia
• Professor Yves Carlier helped guide us in our focus of congenital Chagas disease by highlighting the current issues in diagnostics of acute infections. In addition, he also pointed us towards researching innate immunity and effectiveness of treatment for babies under one year of age.
• Sarah Dragonetti, who gave us expert advice on our applied design
• Dr. Darragh Ennis, who showed us how to use the 3D printer to realise our diagnostic device
• Dr. Matteo Ferla, who gave our team TEV protease to test our V200 part
• Drs David and Carol Harris, who informed our team about the various advantages and disadvantages for the applied design of our project
• Professor Matt Higgins, who loaned our team a Ni-NTA column for protein purification
• Professor Mark Howarth, who our team talked to about the SpyTag SpyCatcher kinetics
• Professor Michael Laffan, who answered our enquiries about blood coagulation and hirudin
• Dr. Piers Millett, who advised our team on the safety of cell-free technologies
• Dr. Michael Morrison, Dr Louise Bezuidenhout and Dr Chris Goldsworthy, who helped our team understand the wider socioeconomic factors around Chagas disease as well as how our project can be implemented
• Professor Keith Pardee, who inspired our team's cell-free DNA applied design when we met him at the Open Plant Forum
• Dr. Ben Riley, who gave us expert advice on our applied design

We would also like to thank the following organisations:

• Oxford Curiosity Carnival for allowing us to run a stall for our project
• Corpus, Oriel, Pembroke and UNIQ Summer Schools for allowing us to give presentations to their students

Individual Attributions