Our Team
Cornell iGEM features a talented and diverse group of individuals striving to use synthetic biology to solve some of our communities' most challenging problems. Our team is made up of five subteams: Wet Lab, Product Development, Wiki, Policy & Practices, and Business.
Wet Lab
Product Development
Wiki
Policy & Practices
Business
Team Members
Deniz Sinar
Team Lead
Biological Engineering, 2023
DENIZEN ŞYNARGENICS INC.
Deniz dropped in to Stonfard University to build Denizen Şynargenics Inc. where she is boardman of the chair. Denizen™ provides bioglobal biosolutions for big bio problems. With 35 bioemployees, we are the biopioneers of 4D-bioprinting, bioethics of triple-use biotechnology, and integrative biobiology. Advised by TIM institute professor Lob Banger, we have published in the scientific journal Sell with an article titled “Negative Correlation Between Walking Up the Slope and Bird-leg Syndrome.” Whether we are developing bioart for your home, constructing your homes with novel BioBricks, or changing your blood type with bacteria, we’re making engineering easier to biology.
Jacob Novozhenets
Wet Lab Co-lead
Biological Engineering, 2024
Jacob is king of being wet-lab lead. He goes so crazy, silly, goofy about cells and transformations! Jacob is also a god at being sarcastic. You never know what he’s thinking…anyways…he truly brings up the humor and funny levels of the team. But we cannot disregard the fact that Jacob consistently has good style and is a bit of a perfectionist in the best way possible. (FYI he copies my style and we have matched multiple times in Gbody - Emma) If you need something to get done in a timely and well organized fashion, Jacob is the person you call. We love Jacob and he honslay slays. <3
Abraham Sinfort
Wet Lab Co-lead
Biological Sciences, 2023
Siddhanth Bhatt
Wet Lab Member
Biomedical Engineering, 2025
Case Study: Siddhanth Bhatt
Overview:
Patient is a 19 y/o male of sound health and strong mental fortitude. Patient has reported an impressive number of “Ws” since coming to Cornell. Assessment of his recent behavior may prove useful in the creation of a benchmark for the ideal BME Pre-Med student. Patient is a paradigm of someone who we should aspire to be. His ambition and genuine care for others are truly commendable characteristics and he is likely to succeed in his career. As a result, the professional team diagnosed the patient with a novel condition coined Sidosis.
Sx:
- Passionate Wet-Lab member
- Impressive Lay-ups
- Extraordinary Chemistry Skills
- Amazing Friend
Patient must exhibit all listed symptoms for at least one academic year to be eligible for diagnosis.
Tx:
While not a debilitating condition, patient would still benefit tremendously from an increase in Arsenal wins. It is highly recommended that the team considers utilizing such a patient’s skills in upcoming matches.
Michael Constant
Wet Lab Member
Chemical Engineering, 2025
Subject: Micheal Joseph Karlsen Constant
Age: ∞
Species: God?!
Height: 5’9” on a bad day, 9’12” on a good one
Weight: Heavier than air?
Origin: It is impossible to pinpoint the origins of Subject Micheal Constant. There are countless paintings, images, stories, and written records documenting the existence of Micheal Constant all throughout written history.
Shohum Finkelstein
Wet Lab Member
Biological Engineering, 2025
Pedro Pablo Vera Perez
Wet Lab Member
Biomedical Engineering, 2025
Pedro Perez (Full Name: Pedro Pablo Escobar Vera Wang Perez Esq) is an essential wet lab member. You can often find him in lab doing statics homework, biomedical transport homework, or physics: electromagnetism homework. As a man of Spanish descent, he has endless amounts of rizz, which is on showcase everywhere he goes. Pedro also makes 22+ credits per semester look almost too easy. He is among the smartest and hardest-working people I have ever met. Outside of iGEM, Pedro enjoys lifting, dry-scooping creatine, lifting, driving in his X4, and being an incredibly dope person to be around. Here you will find a picture of Pedro taken 3 days ago.
Adithya Prabakaran
Wet Lab Member
Biomedical Engineering, 2025
Emma Taigounov
Product Development Lead
Biomedical Engineering, 2024
Emma is the product development lead on Cornell iGEM. Be it MATLAB, a reinvented 3D printer, or even a wonky (and potentially explosive) bioreactor, Emma can handle it all. A constant fixture in the ELL, she really is a jack of all trades — coding, sauntering, fixing and tinkering, Emma exemplifies what it means to be an engineer and have a curious and creative way of thinking. Whether her Dunkin Donuts Iced Latte was gas or river water that day, Emma is sure to have a smile on her face and a joke ready at every meeting. She’s a true leader, always making sure that her subteam members are on board and ready for any task that may be thrown at PD. We’re so so lucky to have Emma on the team and can’t wait to see her next serve :)
Catherine Liu
Product Development Member
Biological Sciences, 2025
Rena Park
Product Development Member
Biomedical Engineering, 2024
Possibly the most stressed and chill person you'll ever meet, nobody can better embody both extremes at the same time. Expect to hear some of the most pessimistic words come out of her mouth, yet her innocent appearance makes this kinda funny. From ANSYS modeling to building a 3D printer to coding our app, Rena has worked on almost every part of our project with those on PD that are actually easy to get along with. She truly has a wide and flexible range of skills valuable to IGEM, although her skills aren't nearly as flexible as her career aspirations. This girl has switched between being pre med to not every semester, but luckily she’s finally decided on what she wants to do — not premed.
Joan Rong
Product Development Member
Biomedical Engineering, 2025
David Xiang
Product Development Member
Biomedical Engineering, 2024
Nayal Zaidi
Product Development Member
Biomedical Engineering, 2024
Maggie Wan
Wiki Lead
Computer Science, 2024
Maggie is our Wiki god. The holder of all wiki secrets. She continuously makes amazing designs with a fresh look each time, and all her code is actually understandable. Her Notion and organizational skills are undefeated. We love her for her patience as we struggle through learning how HTML even works in the first place. In addition to carrying us through Wiki freeze, she’s just a great and fun person to be around. She also has the dedication to walk up the slope at nine in the morning on a weekend to make it to gbody (which honestly I could never). Stay perfect, we love you, please don’t leave us.
Derek Huang
Wiki Member
Computer Science, 2025
Derek is a massive app guy and you can catch him zooming around on his electric bike around campus with an emotionless expression that only means business. But don’t let that fool you! He has a great smile (more like smirk) that leads to him having infinite rizz. For fun, he grinds minecraft and league and wears the same polo to every social event he goes to. He’s also the greatest multitasker I have seen which is why he folds his laundry with his camera on during subteam meetings. But seriously, I enjoy giving him rides to gbody early in the morning and look forward to our conversations in the future.
Vernetta Huang
Wiki Member
Biomedical Engineering, 2025
Vernetta is the go-to for wiki design in iGEM. She is the fun, kpop-loving, woke-up-ten-minutes-ago-to-come-to-gbody girl who you can always count on. She may be switching her major every three months (apparently she’s a CS major now but let’s see how long that lasts) but if I have a question on the wiki or how to even work the Figma for our designs, she is always there to give a helping hand. Vernetta may be doing too many things (she’s in three clubs and TAing like two different classes????) but she always is there to work on (suffer through) writing wiki pages together. Love you girl, being a CS major is totally the move, and let’s have fun in wiki together!!! <333
Shara Shanmugasundaram
Wiki Member
Computer Science, 2025
Parth Vakil
Wiki Member
Computer Science, 2024
Parth is lynch-pin of iGEM transportation. When he’s not busy putting his CodeMonkey skills to use on our wiki, you can catching him giving the most rides to gbody; it’s honestly surprising we aren’t using his CRV to get us to Paris this year. Aside from his time putting together out wiki and app, he is also a great student, trying to zoom his way out of school a semester early. He’s a great person to be around and really thoughtful, everyone feels safe and assured knowing Parth is there to manage all our risks, website or otherwise. When he’s not driving us around, or hard at work, you can always find him winning every ping-pong tournament he competes in or destroying the court in Tennis.
Grace Gentner
Policy and Practices Lead
Chemical Engineering, 2024
Grace is Pnp Queen and Rose Festival Princess (I swear its real look it up) and has been running the policy and practices subteam for basically 2 years now. She is undeniably the best dressed member of pnp on the daily and is always down to practice her French with you. If you’re trying to find her either go to the Celcius section of Wegmans or the creepy chemical engineering undergraduate lounge in the depths of Olin (don’t go there though you’ll probably get lost). You can also summon her if you say pchem three times into a mirror.
Elizabeth Becker
Policy and Practices Member
Biological Sciences, 2023
Lizzy is the absolute best senior on PnP. Committed since the beginning, Lizzy has served many roles on the team: french conversationalist, enthusiastic friend, and Grace’s designated table partner at literally every iGEM function since the beginning of time. If you ever get a second to chat with Lizzy, please ask her about the little fishies she feeds for her job because there are always some delightful stories about the zebrafish.While we will be deeply saddened to be saying goodbye to Lizzy at the end of this year, we know she is destined for greatness. Maybe she’ll be the next worldwide food critic. Maybe she’ll be the next expert on the ethics of bioart. We shall have to wait and find out :)
Elena Joseph
Policy and Practices Member
Human Biology, Health and Society, 2024
Elena, the icon and legend herself, is our FAVORITE pnp junior newbie (and only, but that’s not the point) and our FAVORITE info sci major (again only, but that’s not the point). When she’s not fascinating us all with her beautiful pnp surveys and google forms (how she always gets such consistent responses i’ll never know) (the true master of pnp), she moonlights as a DJ (what an ICON) (QUEEN QUEEN QUEEN) (i think you’re reddit famous?) (so proud so proud). Unfortunately, her musical prowess doesn’t translate to walking? as she currently has a concussion from running in PSB?? (girl please take care of yourself pnp needs you). Thankfully, she knows about the art of napping (can you teach me your ways?) and will not be found on campus at 12 pm, but will show up at uris at 2 am (we love it when our members have their priorities straight) (self care self care self care). When she is on campus, don’t go looking for her in Duff because she refuses to be there (when the vibes aren’t right, they aren’t right, what can you do?). But on the off chance you do run into our mysterious Elena, you never know if she’ll recognize you (third time’s the charm i hope?). On top of all the work she does for her classes, she makes the time for all her extracurriculars which includes girlbossing for iGEM and somehow being part of a cult? (storytimeee). Elena is the master of making impulsive decisions as she thinks that they’ll lead to long-term and positive consequences (confidence is key!). We hope that iGEM was one of those positive and long-term decisions as we wouldn’t know what to do without our beloved Elena (we intend to keep you forever #igemisthenewcult?)
Pallavi Kondayapalepu
Policy and Practices Member
Biological Sciences, 2025
Pallavi, our dearest one and only Pallavi. A truly dedicated PNP member - she doesn’t use her backpack because there’s oobleck all in it #outreachqueen #makingsacrifices #girlwydthoplzletmebuyyouabackpack. She is truly one of a kind: starts and finishes chem labs in office hours, runs on no sleep (this is mind boggling to me bc I run on excess sleep - Elena), and somehow has time to bake??? Her muffins are truly elite (someone get her on cupcake wars asap)!!!! (she would feed me when we lived together and i’m still here. that speaks for something right? - Aindri) Our fav PnP (and only) RA, Pallavi has the best stories and somehow manages to have her life together - she does a billion things and still manages to do well after starting shows during final weeks #icon. Pallavi please don’t ever leave the team (aka please don’t leave me), I will truly burst out in tears and sing in true opera fashion to the tune of Mike Posner’s Please Don’t Go. The one of a kind perfect, precious, pristine Policy and Practices person: Pallavi.
Aindri Patra
Policy and Practices Member
Biological Sciences, 2025
Aindri is one of the BOMBDOTCOM members of the PnP subteam. Her new PR is that she has not slept more an a collective eight hours in the past three days because she is too busy #girlbossing all of her classes. She NEVER procrastinates, because as soon as a problem set is assigned, she immediately adds complaining to her gcal and even gets some of it out of the way by ComPlainiNg in the moment. Our queen keeps it humble though, so she likes to start assignments the day they are due because of all the exhausting work she has done in advance (I aspire to create balance like her). Despite all her work, Aindri still slayyyyys all of her PnP work. She is addicted to anything with a moderate amount of cinnamon and she has gone without eating anything but a pastry until dinner time because that’s how she (cinnamon) ROLLS. If you ever find the need to hit another leg day or just mindlessly climb up a hill, you can find Aindri in PSB or Baker Laboratory – yes, by her own free will (I have my reservations – cough accusations :/) as she rescues all of the struggle-bussing gen chem students with her fabulous CHEM TA skills. She might be problematically addicted to Netflix, but that’s only because she enjoys hate-watching bad dramas (#netflixisaninternationalcopingmechanismforcollegestudentsuwu). Aindri is an absolute PnP beast, and to keep her on the team forever, one cinnamon roll = one less “invisible” chain holding her at Baker Lab. #helpaindriescape
Tarun Vallabhaneni
Business Lead
Biology and Society, 2023
Tarun the spoon, animated like a cartoon, in his red car he goes vroom vroom
Biology and Society he studies, he likes to watch House of Dragons with his buddies
With a minor in business, this individual's potential is limitless
Outside of academics, he dances, he skates, and he is not afraid of snakes
On iGEM he is a star, for his business savvy people know him near and far
Lead is his title, whether its trivia or ice cream events he is never idle
With his passion for emerging technologies he found solace in synthetic biology
Crafting an entrepreneurial plan for MicroMurals is his mission, gold in his vision
Pedro Da Silveira
Business Member
Biomedical Engineering, 2025
Srishti Khetan
Business Member
Biomedical Engineering, 2024
When Srishti isn’t busy making mean presentations for the business sub-team, she’s making even meaner caramel lattes at Zeus’s cafe. She works at Jiang Lab at Cornell, and sings with the Touchstones. This gal really does it all. Not to mention, if you ever need someone to hike, rock climb, bake, or run with, she does that stuff too. So pretty much if you need a buddy to do just about anything with, she’s your gal.
Marla Mitchell
Business Member
Industrial and Labor Relations, 2023
Ever watch hockey in the Olympics?? Any chance you caught Miss Marla on the screen in action. Okay maybe you didn't because she can’t actually skate…yet, but after her intro to hockey class the girl might as well be a pro. Outside of the business subteam Marla is somewhat of an adventurer as she adores the outdoors. If you talk to her she’ll pull out the “I love to ski” for sure and at this point you’ll be convinced that the olympics were definitely a pipeline dream for this girl at one point. If you do want to start a competition with Marla all you need is some homemade cookie dough and a spoon, start the timer because Marla will definitely have you beat in cookie consumption.
Steven Zgaljardic
Business Member
Industrial and Labor Relations, 2023
He loves to write code
And to throw a football too
He’s Steven the Greek
He rides all the waves
And does tricks on his skateboard
Great at yoga too
He loves to create
He’s the IP genius
No, he’s not single :(
Rocky An
Student Advisor
Mechanical Engineering, Biological Engineering, 2023
Margaret Keymakh
Student Advisor
Biological Sciences, 2023
Margaret is the pre-med QUEEN of iGem. Margaret (more than) willingly stayed in Ithaca over the summer JUST so she could help out her younger wet lab peers with their work (definitely no other reason for her to stay lol). Always just one phone call away, Margaret is always super happy to give advice on classes (getting people through the Cornell premed grind), her many orgs around campus (go tour guides!), and even housing in Ithaca (shoutout to the passing down of the new iGem annex on Williams St.). Who else would radiate so much positivity at a 10am Saturday G-Body?? We will miss Margaret so much next year when she is off doing awesome doctor-y things!!