The 2017 Research Team

iGEM Guelph is a newly formed team, with 2017 being our first year competing. This year our goal was to establish the club and learn how the iGEM competition works so that we may be competitive in years to come. This year we made strong new friendships and learned a lot about what we are capable of and where we need to improve for next year. We look forward to competing in the years to come and experiencing all of what iGEM has to offer.

The University of Guelph was founded in 1964 and specializes in Agriculture, Veterinary Medicine and Biology. Its main campus is located in Guelph, Ontario, Canada.

Co-President Lab: Danielle Rose

Danielle is in third year Molecular Biology and Genetics at the University of Guelph. Her main responsibilities this year included organizing laboratory activities, coordinating team activities, purchasing, and coordinating with advisers. She is also in charge of coding the wiki so finds talking in the third person about herself very odd. This year she enjoyed spending a great deal of time in the lab conducting experiments, helping with troubleshooting and designing primers. Danielle also helped with contacting potential sponsors and raising awareness of iGEM within the University of Guelph. She also helped with the administrative aspect of the team such as ensuring safety forms were filled out and obtaining key card access. Taking off her biology hat and pretending to be an engineer for a day she designed and built a battery powered tube rotator for the team for use in the 37 Degree incubator during transformations.

Danielle is pretty obsessed with microbes, especially extremophiles and is happy to talk your ear off about all the cool things microbes can do. After completing her undergraduate Danielle intends on becoming an entrepreneur and starting a biotech company. In her free time she enjoys reading, cooking, and a multitude of crafty endeavors (drawing, jewelry making, etc.).

Co-President Business and Humanities: Jehoshua Sharma

Jehoshua is in fourth year of Microbiology with minors in Molecular Biology and Genetics as well as Philosophy at the University of Guelph. His responsibilities ranged from securing lab space and materials to lots of primer designing and avoiding ethidium bromide contamination in our gel work. As a microbiologist, he did a lot of the growth and isolation work, with a highlight for him this year being an 8 segmented plate he was able to get isolated colonies from. He has aided in the development of lab protocols, obtaining funding for the team and generating interest of Guelph iGEM at the faculty and student level.

Both inside and outside of the lab, he is known as Khal Jehosho, knower of all, avoider of ethidium bromide, designer of primers, transformer of e coli and modeller of lab coats. He hopes to one day be the king of bacteria and has a keen research interest in antibiotic resistance and alternative antimicrobial compounds such as lysins and antimicrobial peptides. When he isn’t heralding the doom of society as we know it he also has experience studying yeast epigenetics and a minor in philosophy with the aim of shaping public ethical assumptions in the field of biology.

Vice-President Wet Lab: Nykole Crevits

Nykole is in her third(ish) year of Molecular Biology and Genetics at the University of Guelph, and a graduate of the Biotechnology Technician program at Conestoga College. She has almost two years’ experience employed as a Plant Pathology Research Associate at Syngenta Canada, and a Lab Technician at the University of Guelph. Her main responsibilities within iGEM include laboratory work, assisting in lab inventory and ordering, mentorship of other lab team members with technical tricks of the trade. She has also been helping the team with fundraising, awareness efforts, recruiting, social media, literature reviews and project planning.

Outside of the lab, Nykole has somewhat of an eclectic collection of hobbies. She does all sorts of crafts from drawing to wood-burning, digital art to jewelry-making, you name it! She works part-time at an engraving shop to help pay for her other hobbies. She is an avid player of Catan, as well as a variety of videogames. She holds a world record for a Staphylococcus aureus protein fold in the game ”foldit” and is recognized in a published journal for one of her contributions to a protein solution. Did we mention she’s a bit of a nerd?

Vice-President Dry Lab: Dan Lipworth

Dan is in his third year of Biological Engineering at the University of Guelph, having already completed a Bachelor of Business Administration at Wilfrid Laurier University. He also completed two years of BSc Biology at York University before transferring to engineering. Dan plans to be in some form of undergrad program for the rest of his natural life.

Dan is part of the team that designed and executed the experiment that improved the characterization of previous BioBrick parts, particularly comparing the expressivity of different promoters. Dan also supported the wet lab team on the main project. Dan also assisted with team administrative duties, including finance, fundraising, and teambuilding. In addition to iGEM, Dan is on the executive council of the Canadian branch of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space Canada (SEDS), the largest student commercial space advocacy group in the world. When not in school, Dan is playing keyboards, working out, and thinking about all the other undergraduate programs he could one day attend.

Vice-President Business and Administration: Maayan Oren

Maayan is a second year biochemistry student at the University of Guelph. Maayan's main responsibilities include conducting the administrative work required of University Guelph Clubs (a very time-consuming and difficult task). This year she also helped with contacting potential sponsors and raising awareness of iGEM within the University of Guelph. Maayan also assisted with laboratory experiments as she learned about the basics of molecular cloning.

In what little free time Maayan has as a biochemistry student she enjoys playing D&D.

Dry Lab Member: Julia Harvie

Julia is in her third year of Molecular Biology and Genetics at the University of Guelph, and because one of her greatest joys in life is math (but no one tell her grade 12 functions teacher she is finally admitting that) she is also perusing a minor in Statistics. She is currently employed by the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario as a student researcher and works heavily with the BOLD System. Her career plan to take advantage of the niche that is being created due to next generation sequencing and other similar techniques that produce large data sets which require the skills of both a biologist and a statistician to analyze. Her goal is to remain employed by universities and other similar research based institutions for the rest of her life and never have to venture out into the real world. She was a late addition to the iGEM team, recruited due to her preference for science outside of the “wet lab”. She worked directly with the BioBricks, analyzing their provided information, performing literature reviews and designing an experiment to help categorize them. She was also actively involved in implementing the club component of iGEM at the University of Guelph.

With all the free time Julia has, she can be found attending Zumba classes, trolling the internet for dank memes and seeing how many meals can she get out of one rotisserie chicken so she can cook as little as possible. Mostly importantly, she has recently found the Morty to her Rick in the form of an 8-year-old rescued Shepard named Linkin. Whether it is napping on the couch, watching Bones or zooming around the streets of Guelph, every day is an adventure when you know you have a best friend just waiting for you to come home.

Dr. Cezar Khursigara

Dr. Emma Allen-Vercoe

Dr. Joseph Lam

Marissa Dahari