Team members

ABOA 2022 consists of 14 team members majoring in Biochemistry, Biology, Biotechnology, Drug Discovery and Development, Molecular Biotechnology and Diagnostics, and Molecular Systems Biology. As we started the iGEM year, the first thing to do was to form different subteams for different project sectors. In the table below, you can see which team members were part of which subteams. More detailed descriptions of each person's responsibilities can be found underneath. All team members participated in the general activities, such as brainstorming and wiki writing, and thus, they are not separately mentioned for each member.

Anni Marjomaa

Anni was an active member in the wet lab subteam. In addition, she contributed to the educational materials for school visits as well as to educational posts published on our social media accounts. Anni was also arranging some of our integrated human practices meetings with farmers as well as participated in Heureka workshops, school visits, and the Study in Turku fair where we spread knowledge about iGEM and synthetic biology in general.

Evelina Ojaniittu

Evelina spent a whole summer in the lab doing our experiments. In addition, she contributed to educational posts published on social media and took care of our Facebook account in general. Evelina also participated in school visits, Heureka workshops, and the Study in Turku fair.

Iida Raaska

Our head of IT, Iida, was in charge of the coding of our wiki and she also took part in the creation of our own website. In addition to these responsibilities, Iida also contributed to dry lab work.

Jesper Mickos

Jesper, our head of Wet Lab, planned the majority of our experiments and organized our lab work. He participated in both wet lab and dry lab -related collaborations and partnerships and troubleshooting actively. In addition to the wet lab, Jesper also contributed to fundraising and human practices activities, such as the Study in Turku fair and the Science Basement talk.

Jonna Pohjankukka

Jonna actively participated in fundraising, wet lab, and human practices activities. She created some social media content for Instagram and was in charge of our LinkedIn account. Jonna also contributed to the educational content for school visits and visited one school. In addition to this, she participated in the Heureka workshops for kids and in the Study in Turku fair, where we told other students about our project and iGEM. Jonna was involved in many of our collaborations and partnerships and you can also hear her voice in our promotion video.

Juuli Hietarinne

Juuli continued her last year’s iGEM journey as a team leader with Malin. They shared various organizational and guiding tasks, trying to teach as much as possible to new iGEMers and to ensure that all relevant criteria were met. In addition to her role as a team leader, she was also the head of Media. Juuli’s media-related tasks included, in addition to the organizational duties, creating social media content, writing a piece of news, and updating our own website. Besides, she actively participated in wiki coding and layout planning, fundraising activities, and promotion video planning. Juuli’s human practices -related responsibilities included for example planning and creating educational posts published on our social media accounts, creating other educational material for school visits, and taking part in some collaborations.

Kevät Sova

Kevät was the head of Human Practices. Alongside their responsibility as a subteam leader, they participated actively in the wet lab subteam by working in the summer. Additionally, they used their artistic creativity to participate in the Synbio-themed art journal made by the iGEM team ASU. They also arranged school visits, interviewed various researchers and farmers, and participated in the Study in Turku fair.

Kristiina Keski-Oja

Kristiina was the treasurer of the Aboa Turku ry, the organization behind our team. Thus, all money-related things were her responsibility. She was also an active member of the wet lab subteam, as well as participated in human practices and fundraising activities.

Malin Eriksson

Malin continued her role as a team leader from last year and shared the task with Juuli. Together with Juuli she tried her best to share everything she had learnt from her iGEM 2021 experience to the new team to avoid repeating past mistakes and set the team up for success. This included, for example, organizational tasks and scheduling. Additionally, Malin helped the wet lab subteam get started, negotiated to get a laboratory for the team to work in, provided everyday support and advice to the lab team in the beginning of the summer, and actively led many collaboration and partnership meetings. She also had smaller roles within the team’s human practices and fundraising work, which included contributions to educational materials, interviews with stakeholders, and securing financial assistance from the university.

Minttu Turunen

Minttu was our head of Visual Design, and her main responsibility was the planning, filming, and editing of our amazing promotion video. In addition, she took multiple photos for our wiki, participated in the planning of our wiki layout, and contributed to educational posts published on our social media accounts.

Nelli Heiskanen

Nelli was our head of Fundraising. Her duties as a subteam leader consisted of planning the strategies for fundraising, such as contacting possible sponsors, creating value for the sponsors, creating presentation materials, and organizing meetings. Alongside her responsibility as a subteam leader, she created social media content as well as educational material for our school visits. She also contributed to the promotion video planning and acting, as well as participated in some other activities, such as the Science Basement talk.

Otto Rydman

Otto was a wet lab subteam member and also participated in multiple human practices activities, including stakeholder interviews. Furthermore, he contributed to the planning of our promotion video and was the main film star in it.

Sini Kylä-Kaila

Sini was the chairperson of Aboa Turku ry, the organization behind our team. She also contributed to fundraising, visual design, and media activities in the spring.

Sofia Antin

Sofia participated in the wet lab work.

Our primary PI Pauli Kallio

Our primary PI Pauli Kallio provided us with useful insight throughout our brainstorming process, which helped us direct our project's focus on detection systems. He also helped us with troubleshooting as well as supported us throughout the iGEM year.

Figures and illustrations on our wiki are created with Canva or Biorender.