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ATTRIBUTIONS
The Real Vegan Cheese iGEM Team
Real Vegan Cheese is made possible by the combined efforts of our team of 24+ biohackers and citizen scientists working out of two open community labs in the San Francisco Bay Area: Counter Culture Labs in Oakland, CA and BioCurious in Sunnyvale, CA. The Real Vegan Cheese project is open to collaborators of all skill levels and from all walks of life. In October we will be entering our Real Vegan Cheese project into the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition. We are excited to be part of a larger global community consisting of students and biohackers from over 30 countries! Below are those that made this project a reality.
CORPORATE SPONSORS
Many corporate sponsors supplied materials and discounts through iGEM or to our project specifically.
THANK YOU FOR THE COMMUNITY SUPPORT
This project would not have been possible without the support and donations from people around the world to our Indiegogo Campaign. The campaign had 696 funders raise $37,369. This funding is vital, not just for the iGEM competition but as a foundation to move forward with the project. We learned as a result of this campaign, that there is enormous support for this type of synthetic biology project among the Vegan community.
DIY COMMUNITY
The project could not have moved foreward without the support of the DIYBio Community. Having access to lab space at BioCurious and Counter Culutre Labs is proof that coumminty science projects can be done.
TALKING ABOUT US
We are fortunate that many journalists and bloggers took an interest in our project. Thank you to all the sites that featured Real Vegan Cheese. Their coverage helped spread the word and was invaluable to our fundraising efforts.
- East Bay Express
Inside the Ethical Cheese Lab - Oakland biohackers are manufacturing the first-ever vegan cheese product made from genetically modified yeast- by Sam Levin
- Vice
Biohackers Are Trying to Modify Yeast to Make Vegan Cheese That Doesn't Suck - by Jason Koebler
- BoingBoing
Biohackers making "real vegan cheese" - by David Pescovitz
- CNET
A vegan-cheese project on Indiegogo aims to replicate cheese from cows' milk without involving any mammals. by Amanda Kooser
- Make
DIYBio Group Making “Real Vegan Cheese” - By David Lang
- TechCrunch
Real Cheese From A Lab, No Cow Necessary - by Sarah Buhr
- Engadget
Lab-grown 'real' cheese made without milk - by Mat Smith
- DailyMail
Would YOU eat lab-grown cheese? Vegan substitute created without milk is made from protein genes - by Victoria Woollaston
- Gizmodo
"Real" Vegan Cheese is an Edible Oxymoron - By Gerald Lynch
- Phys
Biohackers reengineering baker's yeast to make vegan cheese - by Bob Yirka
- Geek
Bay Area brains hacked brewer’s yeast to make vegan cheese - by Lee Matthews
- Science2.0
Vegan Cheese - No Milk, Human DNA Instead - By Hank Campbell
- O'Reilly
Designing real vegan cheese Synthetic biology surely can get weirder — but this is a great start - by Mike Loukides
- Slate
Biohackers Are Growing Real Cheese In A Lab, No Cow Needed - by Ariel Schwartz
- SingularityHub
Lab-Grown Cheese Made by ‘Milking’ Genetically Modified Yeast Cells - by Jason Dorrier
- KQED
A Quest for Vegan Cheese That Actually Tastes Like Cheese - by Silvia Francis
- PopSci
Can Biohackers Succeed At Making 'Real Vegan Cheese'? Scientific opinion varies on the practicality of animal-free dairy - by Emily Gertz
- Bing
‘Real’ Vegan Cheese- No longer a contradictory phrase?
OUR TEAM
Everyone on the team was involved in some capacity. We had weekly, and sometimes bi-weekly team meetings to plan, and experiments throughout the week as schedules allowed. Specific project contributions include:
- Rebecca led, and Patrik, Craig, Ahnon, Marc, Bryce Wolf contributed to the discussion around Ethical, Legal, Societal and Environmental Issues.
- Ashley, Craig, Patrik, Advait, Johan and Rachel helped with the DNA design, including codon optimization, and checking for restriction and protease sites.
- Rachel took charge of sequence validating our constructs, with some help from Craig
- Ashley, Patrik, Marc, Benjamin, Teddy, Jamie, Carl, Advait, Maria, and many more helped with the IndieGogo fundraising campaign
- Craig, Johan, Patrik, and Marc ordered reagents
- Maria, Advait and Patrik kept us on track with iGEM deliverables
- Aaron, Meenakshi, Rachel, Lafia, Nikola, and Johan did most of the experimental work (but we all got to contribute!)
- Jared Morgan designed our awesome graphics.
- Carl helped with weblayout on the iGEM wiki
- Emi arranged for sequencing pickups
- Marc Juul Christoffersen (treasurer), Craig Rouskey (chair), Maria Chavez (secretary), Carl Crott, Johan Sosa, Moises Cassab, Lafia Sebastian, Meenakshi Choudhary, Rachel Linzer all joined the projects Board of Directors
Mohammed Almahbashi
BS, Biology - Human Physiology
He is currently student at City college of San Francisco pursuing a Biotechnology lab assistant certificate. He is also currently an intern at UCSF Mission Bay. His lab studies the cell Cycle and how the post translational modification of proteins regulate cell cycle with the contribution of DNA damage response. His lab uses the Yeast as our system Model to study the DNA damage respond in Yeast.
Aaron Byran
Molecular Biology Undergrad
Member of BioPrinter community project and Real Vegan Cheese.
Wes Chang
Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering
With background in engineering, Wes has extensive experiences in biomedical research, specifically involving cell biology and microtechnology. Currently, Wes is working the pharmaceutical industry but continues to be interested in new technologies and developments in the biology and biotechnology.
Maria Chavez
MBA, Global Management
Maria has a diverse background and experience. She has been involved with BioCurious and the community lab projects for over 3 years. She is enthusiastic about science and DIY Bio. The Real Vegan Cheese project includes a full range of issues and challenges that drew her interest in the project.
Meenakshi Choudhary
PhD, Biosciences
Meenakshi's research interest focus on learning innovation. she has been involved in different research project like Algae and Cyanobacterial bioremediation, anti diabetic property of Cyanobacteria and Bacterial Bioluminiscence and working with BioCurious for over 2 years. The vegan Cheese project is very interesting and challenging to her.
Carl Crott
BaMF biohacker / Self-taught programmer
Research interests include microfluidics and codified wetlab protocols. Core engineering discipline is in full stack web development and automated infrastructure. Both a technical developer and conversational in research concepts. Experience in scaling, application testing/hardening, embedded systems, parametric modelling, biochemistry, web scraping, design and UIs. Bad at writing in 3rd person.
Antony Evans
BA Math, MBA
Co-Founder and CEO of the Glowing Plant Project.
Teddy Fagin
BA Molecular and Cell Biology
Teddy is a science enthusiast who is drawn to exciting scientific progress. He started participating with BioCurious in late 2012, participated with the University of São Paulo's 2013 iGEM team, and started contributing to the Real Vegan Cheese project this year.
James Foley
Biotechnology Undergrad
James is a longtime vegan and student of biotechnology. His interests include promoting science and critical thinking and exploring the intersections between science, animal rights, and social justice.
Allen Fung
MS Bioengineering
Allen is experienced with hardware development and has performed in vitro research in fields of mammalian angiogenesis and T-cell immunology.
Ashley Graham
BS, Molecular Biology
Tim Heath
BCSE, MSCS, MBA, Computer Science and Engineering
Programmer, and long time DIY Bio enthusiast with a background in robots and deep interest in synthetic biology.
Ryan Holmes
Tito Jankowski
BS Biomedical Engineering
Designer, Pearl Biotech, Co-founder, BioCurious
Marc Juul
MSc, Biotechnology Engineering
Software, hardware and wetware hacker with a background in network programming, synthetic biology and community organizing.
Rachel Linzer
PhD, Environmental Science, Policy and Management
Rachel has been involved with research on multiple human and forest disease systems and maintains a parallel interest in bioethical issues. For the past five years, she's been an at-home parent tending her own two mating experiments, so she's especially excited about participating in community biology. Rachel has been a part of Counter Culture Labs and BioCurious since 2014.
Jing Luo
Matthew Milford
High School Student
Matthew is a high school senior currently interested in biomechanical engineering. He participates in the BioPrinter group, is President of the Physics Club, and is an Officer of two other school clubs. Matthew is currently conducting preliminary research on bacterial metabolization of toxins for a special research project at his school. In his sophomore year he sent an experiment to space.
Ahnon Milham
B.S., Physiology, emphasis in Neuroscience
CEO Counter Culture Lab, biohacker, with experience as a lab technician.
Jared Morgan
Designer & Web Designer. Neighbor and designer for CCL and Real Vegan Cheese
Nikola Nikolov
PhD, Nuclear Physics
Nikola has a diverse background and experience. He has been involved with BioCurious since 2013. He has a PhD in nuclear physics. He is involved in the semiconductor industry, programming, and nano technologies.
Itai Ofir
Freshman Undergraduate Student
Science enthusiast, member of BioCurious, Real Vegan Cheese, and BioPrinting project.
Advait Patil
High Schooler
Advait Patil is a high schooler who has a passion for science, biology, and synthetic biology. He has competed and won four medals in the state science olympiad. He is also a Junior Solar Sprint Challenge finalist, and was on his school's science bowl team. He is sincerely determined to learn about and participate in synthetic biology, and aspires to create or discover something that will change the world. He has been involved with Biocurious since 2013, and Is excited to be a part of the Real Vegan Cheese team.
Benjamin Rupert
PhD, Chemistry
Synthetic Chemist, Vegan, and enrironmental activist
Lafia Sebastian
MSc, Biotechnology
Lafia is a postgraduate in Biotechnology and a graduate in life science. She also completed the certificate course in
Biotechnology from the university of California, Santa Cruz. She worked as a research assistant in a liposome drug delivery company. During her graduate studies she was involved in various projects such as assay of biofertilizers, antimicrobial activity of aloe-Vera, bacterial bioluminescence and development of Cyano bacterial biofertilizer and shelf-life. She has been working at BioCurious since 2013. She is proud to be a part of such an exciting real vegan cheese project.
Arif Shaikh
BSC Cell Biology
Arif started college as a business major found Biology more interesting and since then, has been focused on reading and applying new skills in biological research. Went to Liberal Arts School named Dominican University of California got a 4 year degree in Biology with a concentration in Chemistry. Then started an internship at a Tissue Engineering company. After College started working for a biotech called Antibody Solutions,learned a trade in Biochemistry with Antibody, Antigen reactions.
Johan Sosa
Johan has a background in computer security. He has been involved with BioCurious since 2012. He is into everything science. The idea of making Vegan Cheese is exciting to him.
Akhil Varanasi
Rebecca Wilbanks
BA, PhD Candidate, Modern Thought and Literature
Rebecca is working on a PhD in Stanford's program in Modern Thought and Literature on the speculative futures of biotechnology, combining literature, science studies, and the history and philosophy of science. Previously, she taught biology at the Bronx High School of Science, and is interested in the intersection of science and culture.
Joanna Wilczek
ADVISORS
Patrik D'haeseleer
PhD, Computer Science
Patrik D’haeseleer is a bioinformatician by day, mad scientist by night. He is a cofounder of Counter Culture Labs, community projects coordinator and leader of the BioPrinter group at BioCurious, and scientific advisor of the Glowing Plant project. He participated in iGEM 2004 as part of the Harvard/BU team while doing his postdoc at the Church lab.
Craig Rouskey
MSc, Molecular Biology, Microbiology, Biochemistry and Immunology
Molecular Immunologist and Biohacker, has researched adoptive T cell therapies for leukemia and prostate cancer, elucidated a role for novel T cell types in psoriasis, created bacterially-vectored protein and DNA vaccines, and is currently the Principal Scientist for the Immunity Project - working to create a PLGA-vectored HIV-1 vaccine free, to the world.
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