Lab support

Dr Virginie Dufour gave us general lab support, teaching us many different techniques. She helped us to design our BioBricks and primers, and helped us to troubleshoot PCR and Gibson assembly issues.

Dr Paul Curnow also supported us in the lab, particularly helping us to troubleshoot problems.

Dr Fabio Parmeggiani advised us on using overlapping PCR to circumvent problems with Gibson assembly.

Modelling support

Dr Lucia Marucci, Sam Johns and Vittorio Bartoli (PhD students) helped us to model enzymatic reactions and gene regulatory networks (GRNs).

Prof Dudley Shallcross advised us on simulating NOx production, diffusion and advection through cities.

Prof Julea Butt, from the University of East Anglia, advised us on the enzyme kinetics of Nap and Nrf.

Dr Ross Anderson also advised us on the enzyme kinetics of Nap and Nrf.

Dr Martin Homer also advised us on various aspects of our modelling.

Human Practices & Public Engagement support

Mireia Bes i Garcia & Vivienne Kuh from the Public Engagement officeinformed us of important public engagement events occurring around Bristol over the summer. They also gave us important tips on how to engage with the public at these events - for example by catching and holding people’s attention with a short, snappy pitch. They then advised and gave us feedback on our public engagement stall’s design and contents.

Dr Sabine Hauert advised us on interviews and social media presence.

Councillor Fi Hance met with us to discuss how our project could be implemented in Bristol in a hypothetical future, covering social, environmental and economic considerations.

Malcolm Love gave us the opportunity to be interviewed on his radio show, Love and Science, on BCfm and gave us useful advice which we incorporated into our media guide.

Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees, Avonmouth Councillor Jo Sergeant and Bristol North West MP Darren Jones gave us feedback on our project and outlined some benefits and potential drawbacks of our proposed implementation - ideas which we were able to integrate into our Scenario Analysis.

Foresight Analyst Maree Conway - a PhD student at the University of Swinburne, Melbourne - and Dr Michael Reinsborough at BrisSynBio, gave us invaluable advice on how to structure and present our Scenario Analysis.

Dr Tim Chatterton, an expert in air pollution at the University of the West of England, highlighted potential problems with our project and some of the risks and challenges we could face communicating our project to the public. This forced us to think more carefully about the details of various aspects of the project, in particular pod design, which would require a large, but not overly intrusive, surface area, and would need to facilitate high efficiencies. He also highlighted the importance of considering the full life cycle implications of our project, raising concerns regarding release of NOx back into the environment if the ammonia our pods produced were used as fertiliser. This encouraged us to plan to integrate an MFC into our pod design which would utilise the ammonia at source.

Prof Eddie Wilson helped us with our Integrated Human Practices by directing us toward recent projects attempting to mitigate NOx pollution which we were able to learn from. He also stressed important pod design considerations, in particular the need for a large surface area.

Prof James Ladyman stressed the importance of effective communication with the public in order to generate the all-important trust which will enable us to implement our pods in the real world, without scandal. He also emphasized the importance of transparency, using language and analogies that the wider public will understand. This helped inspire us to create our media guide, to assist ourselves and others to communicate with the public. It also encouraged us to be active in creating the numerous graphics on our Wiki, along with our educational Plasmid Hoopla game, to make our work more digestible.

Dr Chris Adams kindly lent us a flask of NOx to use as a prop at the Big Bang Fair.

Microbial Bioreactor (MBR) support

Prof Ioannis Ieropoulos and his team from the Bristol Robotics Lab advised us on the use and design of a microbial fuel cell, and particular requirements in terms of materials, experiments and time scales.

Dr Ross Anderson helped us set up and carry out cyclic voltammatry experiments.

Wiki support

Our Wiki was designed by Albert, with content added by Albert and Phoebe. The IDE software we used to create our Wiki was written by Albert and computer scientist Oliver Wright.

Fundraising help and advice

Dr Andy Boyce gave us many contacts for potential funding and advised us on how best to go about approaching them.

Dr Ross Anderson organised many of our funding applications and secured a significant amount of funding from the University.

Design

Matilda Scott, a Graphic Design graduate from the University of West England, designed our Bristol iGEM logo and gave us inspiration for our Bristol BREATHE logo.