Team Members

Brenda is a 4th-year Combined Honours Biochemistry and Forensics student. She is passionate about learning more about how genetic engineering techniques in synthetic biology merge concepts from various disciplines of Science to inform the advent of novel and innovative solutions to problems. In her free time, she enjoys playing sports with friends and travelling.

Ali is a 5th-year Biology student. His research interests vary from developmental to synthetic biology. He is particularly interested in the dynamics of signalling pathways that govern early developmental processes.

Anjali is a 2nd-year Integrated Sciences student. She is passionate about learning more about how synthetic biology can be used to innovate novel solutions to current problems. In her free time, Anjali loves reading, sketching and you will occassionally find her on a clear night at an empty field figuring out the constellations in the sky.

Edward is a 2nd-year student in the Cellular, Anatomical, and Physiological Sciences program. He is fascinated by the creative ways that synthetic biology can be applied to solve real-world problems, and is excited to get involved in this process through iGEM. In his free time, Edward loves reading, writing, and cooking new recipes.

Oliver is a 2nd-year Biochemistry student at UBC and is excited to join the Wet-Lab team this year. He is passionate about the applications of biochemistry, protein engineering, and synthetic biology in broad disciplines such as medicine and industry. He hopes to provide creative approaches to the UBC iGEM team and to communicate synthetic biology to a wider audience. In his free time, Oliver enjoys gardening, swimming, and learning new recipes to cook.

Hannah is a 4th-year Honours Biochemistry and Forensic Science student. This is her first year on the iGEM team but she is very interested in getting more experience with synthetic biology research! Some of her research interests include medical genetics, developmental biology, and finding interdisciplinary solutions to environmental and health issues. In her free time she loves to figure skate, dance, and she plays on the UBC Quidditch team.

Patrick is a 5th-year student in UBC's Computational Intelligence & Design program. He is excited by ways people can harness the power of technology to better the lives of marginialized groups and underrepresented parties. Some of his research interests include human-computer interaction and systems design. In his spare time he enjoys going to concerts and long-distance running.

Kimia is a 4th-year Honours Computer Science and Microbiology & Immunology student who strives to create positive impacts through scientific research and technology. She is especially interested in the applications of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robotics, in the life and health sciences, which is what initially attracted her to synbio and iGEM. Outside of academia, she enjoys engaging with her community through outreach efforts such as volunteering at hospitals and leading coding workshops for kids.

George is a 5th-year student pursuing a dual degree in Biomedical Engineering and Psychology. He is passionate about research where medicine and technology overlap, bringing novel technical ideas to the messiness of biology. He hopes to work in pharmaceutics or biotech in the future, and synthetic biology diversifies the understanding of medicine.

Umar is a 4th-year Biomedical Engineering student with an avid interest in multidisciplinary research. His particular research interests include systems biology, bioinformatics and computational modelling. Umar is excited to continue his role as a Dry-Lab member and contribute towards developing novel synthetic biology solutions with the rest of the talented UBC iGEM team.

Piyush is a 2nd-year Biomedical Engineering student, pursuing a specilization in cellular engineering and a minor in data science. He is interested in tissue engineering, and hopes it apply it to surrogate organogenesis. As a rookie member of the Dry-Lab subteam, he is working on modelling reaction kinetics, and is exploring novel cell simulation techniques. Outside iGEM, he is actively researching novel ways to model flowrates through different media by solving applied ODEs and developing interfaces to visualize these solutions. As an engineer, he loves tinkering, and can be found fooloing around with SolidWorks or working on his car in his spare time.

Meriwether is a 4th-year Behavioural Neuroscience student at UBC. Passionate about novel genetic engineering techniques and the environment, she hopes to merge her interests to find innovative solutions to current biosythetic challenges