Team:Nottingham/Team
Meet the
Team
We are a multi-disciplinary group of dedicated students studying at the University of Nottingham, and working alongside our inspiring supervisors!
Students
Leaders
Saniya Crouch
Team Leader
Saniya is a 2nd year biology student at the University of Nottingham. As team leader, she led our weekly meetings, delegated work and kept us on track. She also spent countless hours in the lab, working alongside lab-partner Millie.
Marta Marcheluk
Deputy Team Leader
Marta is a 1st year biotechnology student at the University of Nottingham. When we realised we needed to create an electronic nose, Marta took it upon herself to learn the fundamentals of building circuits with Arduino, writing C code, and creating 3D models in Fusion 360. You can follow her exploits on the Hardware page.
Wet Lab
Alice Hodson
Head of Outreach
Alice is a 2nd year genetics student at the University of Nottingham. When outside of the lab, Alice led many public engagement events to inspire young and old with the joy of science. Not to mention, she designed and produced her own bacterial-based board game! Follow our events on the Outreach page.
Fiona Kemm
Head of Sponsorship
Fiona is a 1st year biochemistry and molecular medicine student at the University of Nottingham. Throughout the project, she contacted many companies to gain advice and sponsorship. As well as working in the lab, she spent time learning HTML and used her new skills to work on several wiki pages.
Jacob Gausden
Head of Judging Form
Jacob is a 2nd year genetics student at the University of Nottingham. He worked tirelessly in the lab and diligently recorded the team's progress in the lab book, weekly notebook and judging form. You can find a PDF of the lab book on the Notebook page.
Millie Johnson
Head of Collaboration
Millie is a 2nd year biochemistry and genetics student at the University of Nottingham. As well as working with Saniya in the lab, she was our point of contact to many other iGEM teams and coordinated all of our collaboration opportunities. Records of these can be found on the Collaborations page.
Sami Rahman
Head of Human Practices
Sami is a 2nd year biotechnology student at the University of Nottingham. As Head of Human Practices, he interviewed academics and industry experts and gleaned important advice that propelled our project forward. You can follow our journey on the Human Practices page.
Yaseen Tengur
Head of Safety
Yaseen is a 2nd year biochemistry and biological chemistry at the University of Nottingham. As well as working in the lab, he was responsible for ensuring the safety of our team in the lab, and compiling a list of the parts we used in our project. Click to view the Safety and Parts pages.
Dry Lab
Daniel Vaughan
Head of Modelling
Dan is a 2nd year maths student at the University of Nottingham. He built a dynamic model of Clostridium sporogenes to make predicitions that assisted the wet-lab team in their research. He wrote a substantial paper on his findings that can be found on the Modelling page. He also worked with James to write several wiki pages.
James Abbott
Head of Wiki
James is a 2nd year computer-science student at the University of Nottingham. Throughout the project, he spent time designing and developing the wiki. He also worked with alongside Dan to model the wild and mutant strains of Clostridium sporogenes, which can be found on the Modelling page.
Supervisors
Principal Investigators
Nigel Minton
Primary Principal Investigator
This is our PI Professor Nigel P Minton. Nigel established the Clostridia Research Group in 2004. He has filed 15 patents and secured > £30M in funding since arriving at Nottingham. He is the Director of the ‘Synthetic Biology Research Centre’.
Ruth Griffin
Secondary Principal Investigator
This is our second PI. Dr Ruth Griffin's group is developing novel vaccine platforms. Ruth also supports Nigel's health-related research. When not taxiing her 2 teenage kids around, she enjoys acrylic painting and playing the piano!
Wet lab
Andrew Dempster
Wet-Lab Advisor
This is Andrew, he is a postdoc working in the SBRC and will be advising the team on reporter technology, collaborations and bake sales. During his PhD and beyond, Andrew has worked with several Clostridial species, mainly focusing on the gut microbiota. You could say he has a gut feeling about this project... Outside of the lab, Andrew enjoys cycling, rugby and preparing for iGEM team bake sales.
François Seys
Wet-Lab Advisor
François is a 3rd year PhD student and will be advising the team on cloning and genome editing. His research focuses on developing multiplex genome editing tools in clostridia. He has been banned from whistling to himself in the lab, but he just joined a choir to compensate!
Jon Humphreys
Wet-Lab Advisor
Jon is a recent postdoc within the SBRC who will be advising the team on how to detect volatile chemicals, specifically acetone for the teams detector. He usually works on solventogenic Clostridia determining why they degenerate causing them to stop making industrially important solvents. He enjoys swimming, yoga and a cold beer (not always together).
Maria Zygouropoulou
Lead Supervisor
Maria has recently transitioned from PhD student to postdoc, having spent the last few years trying to genetically engineer a clostridial strain into an anticancer delivery vector. It's Maria's 2nd time as an iGEM advisor. This year, she will be advising the team on Clostridium sporogenes, genetic engineering and phenotypic assays. Outside of the lab, Maria likes to make travel plans, do online shopping, pay for gym memberships in vain, and point out the Greek origin of words.
Terry Bilverstone
Wet-Lab Advisor
Terry is a postdoc who will be advising the team on molecular microbiology techniques, in particular, reverse genetics approaches in Clostridium. He will also be assisting Yaseen with registering parts. Terry is excited to assist us with our innovative iGEM project idea.
Dry Lab
Nicole Pearcy
Modelling Advisor
Nicole is a postdoc in the SBRC, and is helping the team use structural modelling to investigate engineered acetone produciyng pathways in C. Sporogenes. She usually works on models of CO2 fixing bacteria to explore their capabilities for carbon recycling and sustainable production of biochemicals.
Rupert Norman
Modelling Advisor
Rupert is a postdoc and will be advising the team on modelling. Rupert works on the construction and analysis of metabolic networks. Rupert prefers to be thought of as an unreliable and occasional consultant for the iGEM team.
Thomas Millat
Modelling Advisor
Thomas is a postdoc and will be advising the team on data-driven modelling and data analysis. Thomas is studying the constraints of and alterations to the metabolic activity of bacteria caused by changes in environmental conditions which then can be applied to favour the formation of products. In his spare time, he is working as a technical official in athletics which gave him the opportunity to support the World Championship in Berlin 2009.
Human Practices and Outreach
Jacqueline Minton
Advisor
As communications manager at the SBRC Nottingham, Jacque is helping with Outreach, day-to-day management and travel. When not at work, she is using her skills to plan exotic holidays.
Louise Dynes
Advisor
Louise manages a BBSRC network called CCnet. She is helping the team with outreach and Human Practices and also overseeing the general management of the team. This is the 3rd year in a row Louise has been involved in iGEM!
iGEM Nottingham 2019