Team:Wageningen UR/Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements


Laboratories of Microbiology (MIB) & Systems and Synthetic Biology (SSB)

The Mantis team would like to thank the MIB and SSB chair groups for their various contributions the past year: amongst them are making several work spaces available, allowing us to use their facilities and equipment and giving useful feedback during the Go/No-go presentations.

People that we would like to thank individually are prof. John van der Oost for giving us advice on the feasibility and design of our bacteria, Philippe Guilla Puylaert for introducing us to the building and giving the safety tour for our team members and Sjon Hendriks for installing our computers and solving the problems when something went awry. Furthermore, we want to give a huge shoutout to our technicians Tom Schonewille, Tom van de Weijer and Ton van Gelder, for ordering all our primers, chemicals and much more, in addition to giving us access to the -80 degrees repositories of both departments.
From the Laboratory of Virology we would like to thank Corinne Geertsema for her work as technician during the time team members were working at Virology and Tessy Hick, who generated chikungunya spike proteins which were used in our project. Finally, dr. prof. Jan van Lent deserves our gratitude for his help with setting up the electron microscope.

We would also like to acknowledge the WHO Collaborating Center for Research and Training on Human African Trypanosomiasis Diagnostics (OIE Reference Laboratory for Surra), Antwerp, Belgium. This institution provided us the genomic DNA for the Trypanosoma brucei species, which was vital for our project.

External Sources:

This is for all the individual people that gave us useful advice, remarks and more through one-on-one conversations. All their input was processed and incorporated into the project.

  • Prof. Joseph Ndung'u, for his advice regarding diagnostic practices and the areas of operation.
  • Dr. Phillipe Büscher, for his explanation of the current situation regarding HAT and the diagnostics used in those situations.
  • Dr. Zoë Rabaey, for her input in our Human Practices, Biosafety and Ethics parts.
  • Jeanine Loonen, who told us her story of the time she worked in Africa.
  • Dr. Erwan Piriou, for his honest opinion and remarks about our device prototype.
  • Dr. Sander Koenraadt and dr. ir. Niels Verhulst, for their input in the decision of how we should apply our device.
  • Prof. dr. Wim van de Poel and dr. Jeroen Kortekaas, for their advice on the decision of how should apply our device.
  • Dr. Pascale Ondoa, for her recommendations regarding our decision of how we should apply our device.
  • Dr. ir. Arnold van Vliet, for his piece of mind regarding vector control and the potential role of our device here.
  • Dr. Robert-Jan Hassing, for his tips regarding Mayaro virus and the availability of diagnostics for obscure diseases.
  • Dr. Marianne van der Sande, for her suggestions on how to apply Mantis during epidemics.
  • Dr. Henk van den Belt, for his ideas about implementation of Mantis in the current market.
  • Mike Martens, for his input in the functionality of the device.
  • Prof. dr. Marcel Verweij, for his thoughts about patient autonomy regarding diagnostics.
  • Dr. André Krom, for his information about safety and risk perception of technologies.
  • Dr. Ghislaine van Thiel, for her input about ethical issues in the health system.
  • Prof. dr. Tsjalling Swierstra, for his explanation on how the risk perception should affect the legal limits to technology.
  • Dr. Ree Meertens, for her ideas regarding the risks and the implementation of technologies.
  • Jaco Westra, for his collaboration and input in the Ethics Project.

Last Words:

Of course we would like to thank everyone that supported our project over the last months. Owing to your advice, help and other contributions, we were able to set up all of this, while enjoying the great experience that is iGEM. Without you, this would not have been possible!


Official Sponsors:

The team would like to thank all our financial patrons, both official sponsors and the anonymous donators via crowdfunding. Through your funding we managed to establish our project, which you have our gratitude for!