Our Team
Our project would not have been possible without all of our advisors, mentors, and team members. The contributions of our Westview iGEM family made our project possible.
Advisors
As a young team trying to figure what is the best way to start our journey, our advisors were of great help. Whether it was working directly with the school to fix our financial issues, or brainstorming ideas for grants, our advisors were the foundation of our team. For the continual advice for our team and synthetic biology, we thank you, Mrs.Ingram and Mr.Donnelly.
We would also like to thank the J. Craig Venter Institute for providing us with lab space and helping our project come to life. Specifically, Dr. Erin Garza and Dr. Jocelyn Macho for mentoring us throughout the entire project!
Financial Support
We would like to thank the Westview Foundation for their financial support. Westview Interclub connected us with ASB and also lead us financially. We would also like to thank San Diego Qualcomm for helping us with necessary financial aid.
We would like to thank SnapGene, MatLab, Benchling, and IDT DNA Technologies for the generous financial support and resources that allow us to pursue the research, we love their licenses for student teams.
Mentors
We would like to thank our mentor Farouk for generously guiding us on this journey and teaching us about our project as well as iGEM. Our weekly meetings with him helped us and our project immensley.
It would not have been possible for our project to happen without the support of Dr. Erin Garza and Dr. Jocelyn Macho at JCVI. They guided us in lab and helped us with the wet lab portion of our project.
Team Members
Kavya Gupta is the president of 2022 Westview iGEM. She was a prominent role in all of the groups: Drylab, Wetlab and Human Practices. She was also in charge of the Westview iGEM 2022 student recruitment and is overseeing future interested students. Kavya was also the main lead in communications between Westview High School, iGEM Mentors, and JCVI mentorships ensuring Westview iGEM was provided with a variety of reasources.
Anika Yadav is the co-vice president, one of the student captains, and a member of the wet-lab sub team. She assisted in coordinating and leading meetings and worked alongside the president to make sure everything was running smoothly. Anika went into lab to perform various experiments with our engineered bacteria and PFAS, working closely with researchers at JCVI in San Diego.
Ananya Bharathwaj is the co-vice president and the co-lead for the wet lab subteam. She helped lead meetings while working alongside the president, ensuring everything was running smoothly. Ananya helped design the experiment, and performed various lab procedures with the engineered bacteria and PFAS at JCVI. She also helped design and upload our parts and their descriptions to the registry.
Sanvi Garg is the Secretary of Westview iGEM as well as the modeling group lead. She recorded notes and ideas during the meetings and worked on the dry lab aspect of our project. As an executive member she helped organize meetings, schedules, and did meeting minutes. As a member of modeling, she worked on finding the right proteins on Protein Data Bank and worked with AutoDock4. She also worked on the wiki page and other deliverables for our project.
Swasti Singhai is the Treasurer of Westview iGEM as well as one of the Wetlab group lead. As treasurer, she was our lead officer for finances. She helped perform various lab procedures with the engineered bacteria and PFAS at JCVI.
William Huynh helped to communicate with the scientist we worked with, William organized meetings and transportation to the labs. Being a member of the wetlab, he went into the lab and performed various procedures such as PCR, Gibson and Golden Gate Assembly, and Electroporation. On top of that, he took meeting minutes and notes during lab days to put into the notebook/experiments part of the wiki.
Kristina Douglas is a member of the wetlab group, and found the enzyme fluoroacetate dehalogenase. She contributed to making decisions with the other wet lab group members during meetings, as well as helping out with the procedures in the lab. Kristina also collaborated with other group members on working on the notebook portion of the wiki page.
Animesh Andhare is a member of the dry lab group. He developed the proposed implementation, as well as the proof of concept. He developed prototype and models to help understand how the project would be interacting with the environment. He also was in charge of developing and editing our video productions, along with creating the closed captions.
Madison Yang is a member of the wet lab group. In the project’s early stages, she worked with other members to research enzymes and defluorination pathways. She also worked on creating Biobricks for the team’s basic and composite parts and contributed to the registry pages.
Leila El-Kareh worked as a part of wet lab during this project, participating in research both early stages and throughout the experiment. She contributed heavily to the idea of dehalogenating enzymes and also the choice between various bacterias used in lab. For the team’s IGEM wiki Leila wrote and finalized the safety page, including safety working in the lab and for the project overall.
Ishana Rahman is a member of the wetlab group. She participated in doing research procedures in lab while working with the other group members. In addition, she worked on the results and engineering success portions for the team Wiki.
Melody Zhao is a member of the human practices group and helps the wet lab group on occasion. She helped organize the ethics symposium by collaborating with Del Norte and CCA igem. She also created the science communication survey and used it to understand the general public’s understanding of PFAS toxins in our water.
Sophie Duan is a member of the dry lab team. She assisted in finding the enzyme for haloacid dehalogenase from Protein Data Bank. She also performed all the simulations of the AutoDock models for haloacid dehalogenase and fluoroacetate dehalogenase with PFOA and PFOS. She then took these models and used the Protein Ligand Interaction Profiler from Protein Data Bank and the data from AutoDock to analyze the data.
Fiona Zhang is a member of the wet lab group. She worked on the project in lab, performing procedures such as PCR, Gibson and Golden Gate Assembly, and bacterial transformation and plating. She also helped design primers and took photos in the lab to help document the procedures and results. Additionally, she summarized the results of the project on the team wiki page.
Nitya Naik is a member of the human practices group. She helped with Westview iGEM team’s collaboration with the DNHS iGEM team and the CCA iGEM team. She helped organize the ethics symposium with the rest of the human practices team. For the team’s iGEM wiki page, she worked on the human practices page, collaborations page, and the partnerships page.
Emily Halim is a member of the human practices group who mainly collaborated with other high school teams, DNHS and CCA iGEM. She heavily contributed to the organization of the ethics symposium and led the presentation for the Westview team there. Emily worked on the human practices, collaborations, and the partnerships pages of the team wiki.
Karen Yuan is a member of the dry lab team. She participated in researching enzymes and their sequences in Protein Data Bank and NCBI for PFOA and PFAS degradation. She also worked on the project description on the team wiki page.
