Individual Contributions
Tatyana Tyschuk, (she/they)
As a team leader, Tatyana took care of managing the project as a whole, contributing to every task. During the research phase, they supported the team in the literature search and information gathering. In the wet lab, she helped with strategizing, advice, planning and supportive tasks (media, plates, mini-prep, etc.). For fundraising, she contributed by looking for companies and going to project pitches. As part of Human Practices, she organized interviews with experts as part of a partnership, wrote survey and interview questions, analysed governmental policies, created educational social media posts and attended iGEMs Human Practices in Product Design seminar. Apart from that, she wrote the script, recorded the voice-over and drew the storyboards for the project promotion video. Additionally, they programmed this very wiki!
Julia Vogl, (she/her)
As leader of the lab team, Julia did the heavy lifting of making our ambitious project a reality. She took care of lab safety, cleanliness, planning of experiments, troubleshooting, plasmid design, etc. She was integral in the initial literature search. She designed the entirety of our part library with the support of our PI Hans Marx. She participated in a variety lab work related collaborations with other iGEM teams, as well as our collaborative work to contribute to future iGEM teams with protocols and parts.
Magdalena Reif, (she/her)
As the face of the team, Magdalena managed our social media, collaborations, partnerships and outreach. She attended meet-ups organized by other iGEM teams and organized the Coding with Biology workshop as part of our educational efforts. She created our signature color palette and heavily contributed to our project logo and team logo. On top of that, she worked in the wet lab, designing gelatin plasmids and troubleshooting along the way. She also contributed to the project promotion videos by providing various translations of the captions to make our video more accessible.
Sandra Reischl, (she/her)
Sandra took over a task few of us wanted - fundraising. She handled all communication with sponsors, seeking them out, contacting them, organizing project pitches she attended with Tatyana. She consistently put effort into applications for grants and financial support. On top of that, she planned experiments and recipes of our bricks, organizing the necessary materials and collaborations to be able to try out a lot of options throughout the project duration.
Paula Schwahofer, (she/her)
Paula passionately applied herself to every team, especially in terms of communication and wet lab. She helped out with brick experiments, going to Tulln to work in collaboration with the IFA-BOKU BioGlue project on novel brick formulations. She contributed to wiki texts, communications, and, even more important, she was the originator of our project idea! Thanks to her, project Pichitecture became a reality.
Neha Singh, (she/her)
Neha can be most prominently seen on our social media, more specifically, our tiktok. She lightened the room with her jokes, and, while she couldn't participate in the wet lab work, she worked hard in the dry lab, creating one of our models with her efforts. On top of that, she was the photographer of most of our team photos. She attended meetings with other iGEM teams with Magdalena, participating in presentations and poster creation. She was heavily involved in our newsletter and designed our team logo.
Zahra Azizi, (she/her)
Zahra supported most of our team tasks, mainly investing her time into fundraising and seeking out sponsors and grants, but also participating in collaboration activities with other iGEM teams. Regarding collaborations, she attended the European iGEM meet-up in Hamburg and organized together with magdalena the Coding with Biology webinar with iGEM Cambridge, UCL and Sheffield. She wrote mails and took care of follow-ups. Furthermore, she jumped in to help in the wet lab in the "sprint" of the last weeks, helping with lab tasks, such as Golden Gate, mini-prep and media preparation. She also conducted both expert interviews for our human practices partnerships and translated one of these interviews as it was in German. On top of that, she conducted the in-person surveying on the street. For modelling, she contributed by literature search and data-finding so we can formulate our assumptions on good and reliable data.
Irfan Erdem, (he/him)
Irfan supported the wet lab team through autoclaving, media preparation and clean-up. He also supported the wiki by contributing to the writing workload. In the inception of the project, he also participated in literature research, and he translated our project promotion video text to turkish.
Theresa Reif, (they/them)
Theresa was the sole animator of the Project Pichitecture promotional video that you can see on our homepage! They worked quickly and efficiently, helping out with audio recordings, correcting and giving feedback on storyboards, and readily adjusting last minute changes. Thanks to them, we are able to promote our project with amazing animations!
Anna Schweiger, (she/her)
Anna supported the wet lab team, mainly working with Julia on plasmid creation and troubleshooting. She also contributed to the wiki by lightening the wiki text workload.
Jakob Sallaberger, (he/him)
Jakob created one of the models you can see on our wiki. He also participated in some project pitches for fundraising and helped out by finding and contacting various sponsors.
Our Instructors
Dr. Hans Marx, Senior Scientist at the Department of Microbiology and Microbial Biotechnology.
Dr. Hans Marx worked tirelessly to support our team in all aspects. He responded any time of day to help us with troubleshooting, took time to clear up our questions/concerns, and motivated us to challenge ourselves during our project along the way. He taught us both theoretical and practical skills to begin performing experiments, helped us with codon-optimization of a variety of difficult inserts and gave us continuous feedback on every deliverable and on-going result. On top of everything, he introduced us to the magnificent world of Pichia pastoris. His expertise, patience and kindness were integral to the success of this project.
Dr. Martin Altvater, Senior Scientist at the Department of Microbiology and Microbial Biotechnology.
Dr. Martin Altvater helped us a lot througout our project. He gave us feedback on our progress and our plans during our weekly meetings, trying to keep us on track. He also gave suggestions when we were lost in our project, and offered us advice on possible troubleshooting and what we might have not considered for when we got an unexpected result. Dr. Altvater's continuous help allowed us to stay grounded and focussed on our project.
Ben Leyland, PhD., Research Assiociate at the Department of Microbiology and Microbial Biotechnology.
Ben Leyland, PhD., has been a continuous advisor on the topic of cyanobacteria throughout our project. Working closely with our team, he helped us at every step: from project inception to troubleshooting the creation of our plasmids. In weekly meetings and outside of scheduled events, our team frequently seeked out his advice. We are also extremely happy to see him join us at this year's Jamboree!
Our Advisors
Dr. Michael Sauer, Deputy at the Department of Microbiology and Microbial Biotechnology.
Dr. Michael Sauer has been, in cooperation with our PIs, supporting our project via help with fundraising and through advice throughout the duration of the work. He also kindly sat down with us as one of the experts we interviewed for our human practices partnership with TU-Eindhoven.
Dr. Diethard Mattanovich, Lead at the Department of Microbiology and Microbial Biotechnology.
Dr. Diethard Mattanovich, apart from helping us with research-related support, supported us in landing sponsorships with companies in the building and construction sector in Austria.
Dr. Jürgen Zanghellini, Department of Analytical Chemistry.
Dr. Jürgen Zanghellini supported us with advise and guidance in the field of modelling, meeting our modeling team members regularly to help with any possible questions and advising regarding approaches. Furthermore, Dr. Zanghellini contributed to our educational effort by holding a publicly accessible lecture on metabolic modeling as part of our Coding with Biology collaboration workshop.
Christoph Schwarz, PhD.,Lead Scientist in strain development at S2B GmbH.
Christoph Schwarz, PhD., has helped us with his wealth of knowledge on cyanobacteria strains, providing is with protocols, possible strains and advice on cultivation conditions early on in our project. He also kindly provided us with integration plasmids fit for various Synechocystis strains.
Dr. Brigitte Gasser, Associate Professor at the Department of Microbiology and Microbial Biotechnology.
Dr. Brigitte Gasser educated our team on the fundamental principles of synthetic biology, plasmid structure and design, as well as correct symbols and terminology to accurate communicate our designs and plans to collaborators and, later, to colleagues at the Jamboree.
Additional Collaborators
Dr. Jens Appel, Research Associate at the University of Kassel.
Dr. Jens Appel kindly provided us with various strains of cyanobacteria (Synechocystis PCC6803 and Anabaena sp. strain PCC 7120) to make our brick creation possible.
MSc. Sabrina Bischof, Project Leader of Project BioGlue
Project BioGlue revolves around creating a biologically based glue to be used for flooring. The project is based at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU). MSc. Sabrina Bischof has given us advice on the use of lignin in the context of our project. She was furthermore amazingly generous by inviting us into her lab to integrate her product, BioGlue, into our brick material. She also provided us with a sample of BioGlue for further experiments.
Dr. Andreas Jäger, Head of International Product Management at Wienerberger AG.
Dr. Andreas Jäger has been a big contributor to the conceptualization of possible implementation strategies of our project, and provided us with necessary feedback from the perspective of one of the big industry players in Austria, which we considered in our human practices.
MSc. Judith Duesberg
Judith Duesberg was one of the two experts who kindly allowed us to interview her regarding our human practices research. She offered us vital insights for our human practices work and analyses regarding our project and education material.
Dr. Georg Gübitz, Deputy of Department of Agrobiotechnology.
Professor Gübitz is the head of the department of agrarbiotechnology at the University for Life Sciences Vienna. He works at the institute of Natural Material Technology which uses natural raw materials and wastes for processing of biopolymers and bioplastics for example. In a zoom meeting he shared his expertise with us and had the idea of using BioGlue from Sabrina Bischof for our project.
Mag. Birgit Marckhgott, Research staff in strategic cooperation at the Department of Microbiology and Microbial Biotechnology.
Mag. Birgit Marckhgott organized our project presentation at Strabag and managed the email traffic. On top of that she helped us out with bureaucratic paper work for our travels to Paris and offered her help for any questions regarding those topics!
Franziska Doleschal, Secretary at the Department of Biotechnology.
Franziska Doleschal managed our team bank account. Additionally, she issued all invoices from our sponsors and organized our expenses. Most importantly, she helped the leader of our sponsoring team with urging questions and always spared time for her when she came by in her office.
Stefanie Wiesauer, Lab Technician at the Department of Microbiology and Microbial Biotechnology.
Stefanie Wiesauer oversaw all orders regarding laboratory equipment and devices while managing the everyday laboratory work. She helped us with ordering laboratory supplies, making competent E.coli and sparing time for helping us out with lab related questions.
Dipl.-Ing. Christiane Veith, Department of Applied Genetics and Cell Biology.
We also want to thank Christiane Veith and everyone from the ÜZ for making our laboratory work over the summer possible by giving us access to the laboratory rooms. Christiane Veith gave the laboratory team a safety instruction before we started our lab work, instructed us for important devices like the autoclaves and borrowed us laboratory supplies. Also, a huge thank you to the whole ÜZ team for helping us out with questions regarding devices or anything lab related!
Dr. Christine Prenner, Senior Scientist at the Department of Biotechnology.
Christine Prenner provided the main lab space for our team to use over the summer. Thanks to her, we had a lot of space and great equipment to use which made it possible to work on our project in the lab for 3 months.
Karin Frühwirth, Department of Biotechnology.
Karin Frühwirt gave us an instruction for the main lab and borrowed devices and lab equipment to our team. Thanks to her we received a perfectly equipped and well prepared lab!
Wei Guo, and everyone from iGEM BOKU-Vienna 2021!
A special thank you to the iGEM BOKU-Vienna 2021 team for sharing their experience with us, answering questions in the beginning of the project,even going as far as sharing their really helpful and greatly organized documents with us which spared us a lot of hours and helped us to get started!