Team:UFMG Brazil/Team

From 2014.igem.org

Our Advisors

Liza Felicori

Dr. Liza is a professor at the Biochemistry and Immunology Department of the Federal University of Minas Gerais. Her work is focused on protein-protein interactions application to diagnosis and therapeutics. Since 2008, she is working on the field of systems biology and synthetic biology.

She is very enthusiastic with synthetic biology and very motivated to bring to light this field in the University through iGEM.

Rafaela Ferreira

Rafaela is a professor at the Biochemistry and Immunology department at UFMG. She has graduated in Pharmacy (2005) and got a PhD degree in Chemistry and Chemical Biology at UCSF (2010). Most of her research involves rational drug design, and recently she also got engaged with synthetic biology.

It is her first time participating in iGEM, and she is looking forward to meet the synthetic biology community. In addition to doing research, her passions are dancing, reading good books and traveling.

Clara Guerra

Clara is a postdoctoral fellow in the Immunochemistry laboratory at UFMG. She received her PhD in Biochemistry and Immunology from UFMG in August of 2011.

She was the major advisor for UFMG's iGEM team in 2013 and in this season she is more motivated than ever to share last year' experience and show the 2014 team members what iGEM is all about.

Rodrigo Baptista

Rodrigo is a Bachelor in Biomedical Sciences at FUMEC University from Minas Gerais, Brazil, has his Ph.D. in Bioinformatics at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG) and is currently in a Postdoc position at Laboratório de Imunologia e Genômica de Parasitos at UFMG.

He was also technologist for genomic Sanger sequencing at Minas Gerais Genome Network (Rede Genoma Minas - RGMG) and has experience in Genomics, Population Genetics, Molecular Biology and Phylogeny, with emphasis on bioinformatics and molecular biology of parasites, acting on the following subjects: (1) Molecular basis of Chagas disease pathogenesis, (2) Trypanosomatids population structure and ecoepidemiology, (3) Molecular diagnosis of parasitic infections and (4) Trypanosomatids genome assembly and annotation.

He loves challenges, and he is pretty excited with the numerous possibilities that synthetic biology can bring to the future.

Students

Laila Sampaio

Laila is bachelor in Biology by the Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais, nowadays she is pursuing master's degree in Biochemistry and Immunology in the UFMG.

She has experience in Immunology, especially with murine models, so she's head of the experimental part of our project, aka collecting stools of the mice.

She helps with the patronage and has been taking many "no" for us.

Thiago Mafra

Thiago is degree in Biology (2006), MSc. in Molecular Biology (2009) and he's close to finish your PhD in Bioinformatics. His thesis is about genomics of probiotic yeast (NGS sequencing, assembly, annotation, comparative analysis).

The cool about him is your passion for dogs, especially his labrador (Luna) and his love for soccer (like most Brazilians). For him, Fifa World Cup is the bigger party of the world and Flamengo the best team, of course!!! He also enjoys playing guitar.