Team:SCUT/HP/Magazine/iGEM People

The Exclusive Interview of the Founding Captain of Jilin University’s iGEM Team

In our last interview, we have introduced the founding captain of iGEM SCUT team——Zhang Junjie to you. This time, I’m going to introduce you the founding captain of Jilin University’s IGEM team, Han jia, a blossoming man of science who have always wanted to become a Public educator. In the following passage I will share you why he wants to become an educator, what he has done to contribute to the dynamic synthetic biology as well as his experience of importing IGEM to his university and how he forged his own team.

The meeting lasting 2 days was organized by HZAU, WHU and HUST iGEM teams. The contents consisted of three main parts: senior iGEMers’ reports, project presentation by each team, and the discussion of debugs in experiments. On the morning of 23th August, Dr. Tang Jun, the professor of HZAU participated in the opening ceremony and gave a welcoming speech. Then we watched the video made by the chairman iGEM Head Quarters specially for the meeting. It was really helpful and wonderful. After the opening ceremony, the seniors Zhang Haoqian and Liu Yang coming from Peking University and Ocean University of China gave us two important speeches, sharing their abundant experience about iGEM. It really paid to learn.

1. The growth process of Han

HanJia began reading a lot of educational books, such as pedagogical psychology at a young age, and became interested in pedagogy. Afterwards he started to become an enthusiast on studying the educational joint projects，and he even involved in many fields of study including economics，ethnics ，psychology, philosophy, management, arts, and medicine, this reading process of absorbing various aspects of knowledge has greatly enriched his study of the life science. When Hanjia first went to the university, he started to be active in child education & community services together with his like-minded friends, and from then on, he had set his heart on a career in the cause of education. Although he gave up his dream career temporarily for many reasons afterwards, he learned great deal from this practices and he indeed made a lot of practical and useful proposals to his old school : Jilin University and Shenyang Pharmaceutical University. To conclude，he is a man with kindness，conscience and public spirits，and he dares to face any challenge and tries his best to overcame them uitimately.

2. Academic career

The present goal of Han is to become a researcher of Beijing Life Science Research Center.And he had already done researches in the labs of Jilin University for 2 years and a half as an exchange student of Joint training of Life Science College of Jilin University. During that time, he not only achieved many challenging academic studies, but also joined substantial practical activities. In Dec. 2011, he became a researcher of the Key Laboratory of Ministry of education Jilin University molecular enzyme engineering, and joined the "Jilin University undergraduate innovation experiment research" as a project leader. Then he studied in Zhang Zuoming’ project called Molecular cloning and characterization of cellulose CpCel9 and its mutants in Enzyme engineering 204 which then enriched his knowledge about Enzyme engineering. He is also a cure researcher of the academic department of the College of life science as well as the school committee of science and technology association propaganda department director who helped to hold "Jilin University" Challenge Cup "Gold Award", "team six campus cup" Impulse Cup "campus marketing competition" and "Jilin University" top ten students selection”. What’s more he also managed to hold the “meeting of exchange of learning in School of Biology”, “meeting of exchange of learning between Research and Undergraduates” and many other academic activities.

After his exchange experience, he went back to Shenyang Pharmaceutical University to continue to do other science researches. And he joined in the Lab of Xi Huanzhang to study Joint related technology transfer gene transfer method and the research of gene function, which grew his interest in Aminoglycoside antibiotics combinatorial biosynthesis related with microbial agents and synthetic biology research.

3. Liking for iGEM

During the talk with team leader Mr.Han, we found that it is even more accidental comparing to Mr.Zhang who was introduced last time.

Mr Han told us that it is the movie" there we were" arouse his interest in Peking university and the school life there. Then he started going through lots of videos about there. By chance, he found the video about the iGEM team in Peking university. From then, the little seed was growing in his heart , which bring him the dream that one day he would has his own team taking this top competition in biology filed. During his year 2. He joined the lecture which was given by the researcher, Li Yan from the institute of microbiology as well as the summer camp in Shanghai Jiaotong university which are all quite relevant to iGEM. All of these brought him more and more close to synthetic biology ,and laying the foundation of establish the iGEM team here.

Through indefatigable effort of university, teachers and students, the IGEM team from the Jilin University is formally launched on 2014. The team is led by Wu Yongge subdecanal, Mr. Liu Chengbo, Mr. Gao Chaohui, Mr. Jiang Yiqun and Ms. Wu hui as the co - director of the team, Han Jia and Du Bochuan as the team leader, Song Guangyuan and other sophomores as principal members，and around other 20 students from the freshmen to seniors who are interested on the scientific research join the team. Then this team is named as Jilin-China as suggested by the organising committee; meanwhile, they jointly create the IGEM China Community and Synbiclub together with other colleges, to facilitate further scholarly communication exchanges.

（Pic 1 Han Jia and his instructor, Prof. Teng）

Finally, after October ,2013, the iGEM team from Nanjing university who won the gold prize and entered the international competition came to Jilin university to introduce the iGEM. At that time, Mr Han has already in his final year . When he hear this news, he decided to back Changchun right away , starting to form the first iGEM team for his mother school -- Jilin university .

When he came back to school, he started pushing this issue with his schoolmates and friend Du Bochuan. They introduced iGEM to junior students during the college welcome party and also brought this news to the deputy dean professor Teng Rongli. Prof. Teng gave great support and encouraged them to go further. Step by step, the dream of iGEM team has become more clear and workable. Meanwhile, Mr Han became more confident to build iGEM team in Jilin university.

At the present time, they has entered a tense phase of experimental stages, everything are new, they come up against a great deal of resistance in dealing with many problems, but they always try their best to overcome all the difficulties. The main project for the IGEM team is regarding the degradation of algae toxins technology in water to reduce the pollution and purify the environment. Here, we would like to express our great gratitude to the team leader Mr. Hanjia for his help on the interview, and we wish that his team will perform well in the coming competition this year.