Prof Eriko Takano has acted as our PI along with Prof Rainer Breitling throughout this project, and her continued expertise and support has been vital to its success. Through our regular meetings from the inception of the idea through to the completion of the project, her notes and thoughts have shaped the development of every aspect of the project, from its initial aims to how each component will function at a molecular level.

Similar to Prof Eriko Takano, Prof Rainer Breitling’s role as PI has informed every aspect of the project. His expertise on systems biology has helped us to consider how our bacteria will interact with other microbes within its environment, and how these interactions will influence the effectiveness of our solution. Alongside this, his continued support has helped the project evolve from inception to completion, with his knowledge influencing every part of our project.

Jack has provided guidance and advice at all stages of the wet lab experiments, including the interlab measurement study. He assisted throughout our plasmid designs and procedures and his presence in the laboratory has continually helped us through our experiments. He has provided needed experience in a multitude of laboratory tasks, ranging from PCR to operating the plate reader.

Francesco provided us insight into writing scripts for modeling of the E.coli growth. His expertise in numerical models provided valuable help throughout the leakage model. He was able to guide us on what aspects of the modeling we could explore and what sort of information could be most useful to us. He also provided detailed feedback on our conclusions from the modeling and on how it could impact our implementation.

Erik has provided guidance for the plasmid design, and advised throughout our interlab study and experimental procedures. He guided us through the project mainly in wet lab and helped us trouble-shoot when we saw unexpected results from our experiments. He also gave us important feedbacks in other areas, including human practices and entrepreneurship.

Dr. Reem Swidah is a biotechnology researcher at the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology. She provided key insights on the experimental design of our experimental procedure, especially those composing the auxin production, double-switch and constructing the DBTL cycle. She provided important feedback on our plasmid design and proposed several procedure to trouble-shoot our experimental procedures.

Alba provided guidance for the wet lab experiments and project design. Her assistance helped us to form our experimental procedures, and she provided guidance when in the lab. She also gave us feedback during the meetings which she attended, inlcuding our meeting with BMG labtech.

Prof Gabriel Acien provided us with important information about the cultivation conditions of microalgae in wastewater. In this regard he provided us with important mathematical models and nutrient concentrations from which we built our model. He provided an analysis on the challenges that the biofuel market is facing in terms of economic sustainability, providing us with estimations of the costs of producing and purifying microalgal fatty acids. He added to this by showing us the bioreactors in the University of Almeria, allowing us to observe different photobioreactors and open raceway ponds employing organic wastewater.

Cintia Gómez provided information about the biology behind fatty acid production in microalgae. She discussed the current strategies for the optimisation of lipid production in microalgae, explaining the challenges of using biotechnology and consortiums for the production of biofuels. She explained the importance of understanding the symbiotic relationship between the microalgae and the bacteria. She also pointed out the importance of designing a leakage model to assess the impact that our system might have in nature.

Dr John Pittman's expertise in his field helped us to modify our projects to best fit a commercial setting. One example of this is his advice to pivot away from producing siderophores, and instead focus on producing auxin to assist microalgal growth. Throughout the project, he continued to support us with advice, in addition to acting as a judge in our virtual symposiums with other iGEM teams.

Professor Philip Shapira provided us with invaluable insight as to how our project would be perceived by investors, and allowed us to modify our project presentation to better suit the interests of these groups. This included providing feedback on our business pitch, and helping us to refine this to better get our point across. Furthermore, his advice opened our eyes to other markets that our project could be applicable in, such as biofuels for the aviation industry.

Professor Patrinos has provided us with an invaluable insight on the approach we need to take to subsequently integrate our project in the world and made us consider important future steps for our project. These future steps include a GMO-related survey that would give us an insight upon people’s opinions with regards to our project and a computational model that would assess the survival rate of our bacteria in consonance with the other organisms present in the wastewater media, as well as if our engineered bacteria would outcompete the bacteria present in a water body if the biocontainment of our system is breached. Furthermore, his advice opened our eyes to the importance of the ethical and governmental regulations we need to respect to implement our project in the world.

Whilst working in the laboratory, Jakob’s advice and help enabled us to progress through our experiments rapidly. His provision of a genome encoded RFP strain of E.coli enabled us to test our phosphate construct, thereby directly contributing to the success of our project. He also provided us with general feedback throughout our lab work.

Mr Olan Ryan provided us with valuable information regarding the current use of sustainable aviation fuel within the industry. He also pointed us towards various research materials, including Waypoint 2050, which is the global aviation industry's plan to reach net-zero carbon goal by 2050.

Prof John Love provided us with valuable information regarding microalgae cultivation in wastewater treatment. He suggested that overcoming the competition between bacterial species present in wastewater could be a critical challenge for our project.