Team:ColumbiaNYC/Team
Meet the Team
Columbia iGEM: Students and amazing mentors alike!
Noah Basri
A member of Columbia College’s Class of 2018, Noah Basri exhibited a keen interest in biology and medicine since his early years. Majoring in Biology at Columbia, Noah joined the student-run Emergency Medical Service with the aim of making a meaningful impact on the Morningside Heights community. During the academic year when he is not driving the ambulance around the Columbia neighborhood, Noah can be found communing with his residents in McBain Hall as he is also a Resident Advisor. Noah’s previous research has helped characterize the epigenetic landscape of gliomas, specifically the role of the chromatin modifier CHD6 at dysregulated oncogenes. His findings were subsequently published in the Columbia Undergraduate Science Journal. These days when away from his cloning projects on the lab bench, Noah enjoys spending his time hiking and biking outdoors.
Brandon Cuevas
Brandon Cuevas is a sophomore in the Egleston Scholars Program on the pre-med track majoring in Biomedical Engineering and minoring in Computer Science. On campus, Brandon is involved with the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, Synthetic Biology Initiative and American Physician Scientist Association, holding positions as the community outreach chair, education/media committee member and Co-Medical School Liaison, respectively. He has done research on microtubules at the Hess lab at Columbia University, and is now doing research on pancreatic cancer with the Olive Lab at the Columbia University Medical Center. In his spare time, Brandon enjoys playing video games, watching comical YouTube videos, dunking on Alex Kim in basketball, and collecting catchphrases to add to his lexicon. Cool beans, right?
Jennifer Fang
Jennifer Fang is a sophomore in the Science Research Fellows program on the pre-med track pursuing a Biochemistry major who loves to cook, read, and play violin in her spare time. Before iGEM, she worked on the crystallization of a newly-discovered plant protein, discovered and designed new potential treatments for pancreatic cancer, worked on developing real-time medical image reconstruction from MRI and CAT scans using parallel computing and machine learning, and designed and implemented a satellite study of Earth’s radiative balance. On campus, she is an officer on the Research Committee of Columbia’s chapter of the American Physician Scientist Association, and officer on the Outreach Committee of Synthetic Biology Initiative, and the Webmaster and a violinist of Bach Society. She is also an avid member of Charles Drew Pre-Medical Society, Columbia’s chapter of the American Medical Students Association, Chandler Society, and Columbia Music Mentors.
Benjamin Greenfield
Benjamin Greenfield is a graduate from New Rochelle High School in New York. At Columbia Engineering, he intends to explore Biomedical Engineering. On campus, he is involved with the American Medical Students Association (AMSA), Scientists and Engineers for a Better Society (SEBS), Columbia Science Review, and the Synthetic Biology Initiative. His previous research experience include peptidomics research at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Genetic Engineering at Regeneron Pharmaceuticals. Outside of school, Benjie enjoys playing music and exploring the never-ending wonders of the city.
Alex Kim
Alex Kim is a sophomore in the Columbia University Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science and plans to major in Biomedical Engineering with a concentration in Computer Science. He is the CUMC Liason for the American Physicians and Scientists Association (APSA) Chapter on campus, is an Internal Affairs committee member of the Synthetic Biology Initiative Club (SBI), an ER volunteer at the nearby Mount Sinai St. Luke’s Hospital, and financial lead of Columbia Space Initiative’s NASA Micro-G NEXT Mission Team. His previous research at Mt. Sinai Icahn School of Medicine involves researching novel computational methods of visualizing/analyzing methylation motifs in pathogenic bacterial strains. In his free time, he likes to cross up Brandon Cuevas in pickup basketball and write blogs.
Nathan Lian
Nathan Lian is a rising sophomore at Columbia University interested in exploring the application of consulting and entrepreneurship to the world of healthcare and medicine. His previous work in neurological disorders, rare cancers, and conjugation have resulted in several publications in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Oncotarget, and Wolfram Research and a number of invitations to speak at top scientific conferences. These experiences have afforded him the opportunity to guest lecture at local community colleges and serve on the editorial review boards of the Journal of Global Health and the Journal of Youths in Science. He has also been featured on a variety of mainstream media outlets and science news publications like CBS, Health Canal, and Oncology Central. While at Columbia, Nathan has been involved with such organizations as the Columbia China Law and Business Association, Lambda Phi Epsilon, Global Medical Brigades, the Columbia Medical Informatics Society, and the Egleston Scholars Program. He is also a member of the Vunjak-Novakovic Lab.
Panagiotis Oikomonou
Panagiotis Oikonomou is a sophomore in Columbia’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, planning to study Biomedical Engineering. He is originally from Athens, Greece. Before iGEM, he was involved in the optimization of a plasma extraction and cell free detection device, combining microfluidics and “lab-on-a-chip” technologies to create a versatile and efficient point of care device. During high-school, he participated in research concerning the identification of the specific role and the regulation of the cell cycle regulator protein Emi2 in living oocytes, testing the hypothesis that Emi 2 has the role of surveying proper M-phase progression Meiosis I and mitosis in certain cancer cell types. On campus, he is a board member of Columbia University American Association of Medical Students, the co-chair of the Bioethics committee, and an organizational member in the board of the university's Biomedical Engineering Society, In his free time, he enjoys basketball, reading non-fiction, and exploring the city.
Tarun Srinivasan
Tarun Srinivasan is a rising sophomore in Columbia College majoring in biochemistry. On campus, Tarun is the public health chair of the Charles Drew Pre Medical Society, the vice president of the Medical Informatics Society, and an officer of Code Orange. Additionally, he works in the Colecraft Lab studying the inhibition of intracellular receptor trafficking.
Mentors
Harris Wang
Harris Wang has joined Columbia University Medical Center as an Assistant Professor in the Columbia Initiative in Systems Biology and the Department of Pathology and Cell Biology. His research focuses on understanding the evolution of the ecosystems that develop within heterogeneous microbial communities. Using approaches from genome engineering, DNA synthesis, and next-generation sequencing, he studies how genomes in microbial populations form, maintain themselves, and change over time, both within and across microbial communities. His goal is to use synthetic biology approaches to engineer ecologies of microbial populations, such as those found in the gut and elsewhere in the human body, in ways that could improve human health.
Ross McBee
Ross is a PhD student in the Biological Sciences Program. He received his B.S. from University of Texas, Austin.
Carlotta Ronda
Carlotta is a postdoctoral fellow in the lab. She received her PhD in Metabolic And Genetic Engineering from Denmark Technical University.
Sonja Billerbeck
Sonja Billerbeck is a postdoctoral fellow in the Cornish Laboratory. She received her PhD in 2013 at the Swiss Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich) in the interdisciplinary Department for Biosystems Science and Engineering (D-BSSE). Prior to coming to the ETH Zürich, she was awarded a master's in biology from the University of Tübingen, Germany for a master's thesis performed at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in the Department of Protein Evolution studying the function of archeal chaperones. During her doctoral studies, Dr. Billerbeck developed a novel strategy for the rational design of switchable proteins for application in cell-free biotechnology. Her current research interest revolves around the field of synthetic biology, with special emphasis on protein engineering strategies applied to understand and functionalize bacterial microcompartments. She was awarded a fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation, and in 2014 was named a Junior Fellow of the Simons Foundation.
Tal Danino
Prof. Tal Danino's research explores the emerging intersection of systems biology, synthetic biology, and engineering, focusing on building a quantitative understanding of gene circuits and designing biological behaviors that have technological applications. The interaction of microbes and tumors is a major target of his work, where DNA sequences and synthetic biology are used to program–microbes as diagnostics and therapeutics in cancer. Dr. Danino also brings this science outside the laboratory as a TED Fellow and through science-art projects.
Virginia Cornish
Virginia joined the faculty of the Chemistry Department at Columbia in 1999, where she carries out research at the interface of chemistry and biology, and was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2004 and then Professor in 2007. Her laboratory brings together modern methods in synthetic chemistry and DNA technology to expand the synthetic capabilities of living cells.
Lars Dietrich
Lars Dietrich is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Columbia University.
Kenneth Shepard
Ken joined Columbia University in 1997, where he is now Professor of Electrical Engineering. At the same time, he co-founded CadMOS Design Technology, an EDA start-up which pioneered PacifIC and CeltIC, the first tools for large-scale signal integrity analysis of digital integrated circuits. The success of these tools led Cadence to acquire CadMOS in 2001.Current research interests interests focus on circuits for VLSI integrated circuits in deeply-scaled CMOS technologies, new technologies for electronics applications, and the application of integrated circuits for biology-related applications.
