Team:UNBC-Canada/Attributions

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Attributions

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Those who helped us along the way

General Support

• First and foremost, we want to acknowledge our university, the University of Northern British Columbia, for their unyielding support. Collectively, support ranged from access to state of the art research and analytical facilities, including space in both biosafety level 1 and 2 labs, use of equipment and some lab supplies, numerous professors to help and advise, as well as fundraising support and proposal building.
• A very special thanks to our Primary Investigator Dr. Brent Murray, who can no better be described as the “everything man”. He put in countless hours both with us and behind the scenes to make sure all iGEM business was in order and we were always able to move forward both in and out of the lab.
• Also, a big thank you to our resident encyclopedia, Dr. Andrea Gorrell, for helping, advising, teaching, and leading us in the lab portion of our iGEM journey.
• Dr. Sarah Gray for ensuring safe practices in our shared lab space.
• Judy Neiser, CEO of Spirit of the North Healthcare Foundation, who helped inspire our health-related project, and made countless connections possible for us both with healthcare professionals and advisors as well with fundraising donors.

Project and Lab Support and Advice

• Dr. Brent Murray for his critical thinking and problem solving both in planning and when setbacks arose.
• Dr. Andrea Gorrell for her seemingly endless knowledge on biochemical and biosynthetic lab practices and helping us plan and execute lab procedures.
• Dr. Keith Egger for his expertise in microbiology, which helped immensely in our project planning, as well as for providing cultures of Staphylococcus epidermidis.
• Graduate students Corbin Black, Daemon Klein, Aurora Gagnon, Sebastian Mackadenski, and Victor Liu, whom we shared lab space with and answered any range of questions that might have come up in our time spent in the lab.

Human Practices Support

• Dr. Brent Murray offered critical support as we planned our human practices.
• Judy Neiser advised and helped organize various hospital-related human practices events and put us in contact with other healthcare professionals who helped advise us on our human practices endeavors.
• Deanna Hembroff for providing the Northern Health Statistics on MRSA infections in our region.
• Rome-Lee Dubrule for seeking out medical lab professionals we could speak with and for answering questions about her experiences and concerns regarding MRSA.
• Lydia Troc for helping us with our MRSA Biosafety Use Application in order for us to gain approval to work with MRSA in our level 2 laboratory.
• The Prince George Multicultural Heritage Society for allowing us to set up a booth at the Canada Day celebration

Fundraising Help and Advice

• Judy Neiser kindly advised, helped, and lead our fundraising efforts at the beginning of our fundraising campaign. She helped build a fundraising proposal for our team in conjunction with Spirit of the North Healthcare Foundation. She distributed our proposal on our behalf, met and spoke with donors, and put us in connection with potential donors to help our fundraising efforts.
• Kathie Scouten, Director, Development and Alumni Relations at UNBC. Kathie worked alongside the student leaders to develop a UNBC fundraising proposal and helped strategize and build donor relations, as well as distribute our proposal on our behalf.
• Dr. Brent Murray for helping to develop our UNBC fundraising proposal and advising on distribution and making connections with donors.
• A special thanks to UNBC President Daniel Weeks who endorsed our team with a letter of support for our fundraising proposal.
• Another special thanks to Dr. Geoffrey Payne, Interim VP of Research at UNBC, who also endorsed our team with a letter of support for our fundraising proposal.

iGEM at UNBC, Team Training and Project Startup

iGEM at UNBC is still in its infancy, this being our schools second year participating. To help promote iGEM, we offer a Special Topics in Biology course for team members. This course began in June and runs alongside the iGEM project, giving our students course credit for their contribution to the team. The course combines short lessons on applicable synthetic biology and lab techniques as well as a discussional classroom environment to share ideas, learn, and problem solve. Because the course changes by the project, the syllabus is designed accordingly and not published online. This year, hour contribution (a total of 100 hours throughout the summer) made up a significant amount of the course grade with the remainder split between presentations, annotated bibliographies, and a final lab report. iGEM brainstorming, however, did precede the course and began in January with the Synthetic Biology Club, while project work began in May and lab work began in July.