Our team consists of 12 undergraduates and 3 high school students. Check out our bios below!
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Kathryn Brink
Kathryn Brink is a rising junior at MIT majoring in Biological Engineering. She is excited to be participating in this year’s iGEM competition since she thinks that synthetic biology is a really interesting field with a lot of great applications to medicine, agriculture, and the environment. Kathryn was first introduced to Synthetic Biology through a project-based class where, as part of a team, she designed a genetic circuit to regulate iron absorption in the small intestine, with the goal of helping patients with iron-deficiency anemia. Kathryn was previously an undergraduate researcher in the Ploegh Lab at Whitehead Institute, studying the effects of nanobodies on the activity of glycolytic enzymes from S. cerevisiae. Outside of iGEM, Kathryn is treasurer of Stop Our Silence (a student group concerned with sexual assault awareness), mentors high school girls in science and engineering through the Society of Women Engineers, and is a member of Alpha Chi Omega sorority.
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Christian Richardson
Christian Richardson is a rising sophomore majoring in Biological Engineering and minoring in Mechanical Engineering. He has done research in high school using Dictyostelium as a model organism to screen drugs with potential in treating cancer and developmental diseases, but his research with the iGEM team will be his first experience working in a high end lab on a project of his own choosing. Synthetic biology attracted his interest because it is an exciting emerging field that holds a lot of promise for future therapeutics. He wants to pursue a career in research and development for synthetic biology related therapeutics and believes iGEM is a great way to get a sample of what this career would be like. He enjoys rowing, skiing, kayaking, climbing, backpacking, and generally being outdoors. As a kid he loved building things out of his dad's leftover electrical and carpentry supplies and managed to build, among other things, a 200 meter ranged super soaker, a watermelon trebuchet, and a functioning hover car which was suddenly and mysteriously swallowed by a neighbor's swimming pool. He originally planned not to attend college in favor of a career in emergency medicine, but realized that he can impact many more people with a career developing medical treatments rather than administering them.
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