As the first team leader, Brian recruited the members of the team and made various contacts with the lab at ECUST, with other teams, and iGEM alumni to get the whole project on track. While maintaining the overall coordination of the efforts in the team, he later shifted his focus onto the wet lab, designing of the experiment and parts, and carrying out the research. Via weekly meetings, he helped keep everyone aware of where the team is in terms of the whole project, and what everyone should do in the next stage. He also constructed the model that helped us predict the results of the experiment.
Other members of the wet team include Ethan and Aileen, who carried out a majority of experiments; Amber, who participated in experimental design and writing of the safety form; and Jane, who participated in the investigation. Ethan, in particular, devoted the most effort to our experiments among all of us and constructed the model that helped us infer our results to real industrial settings. Crystal and Alexis also helped when the experimental tasks were hard on a specific day. Baron did significant research in both our project and existent parts from previous years. He then contributed to the design for both our project and characterization.
As the leader of the dry team, Crystal is responsible for constructing the team's Wiki. She also joins Ethan and Aileen in managing the team's social media accounts, including WeChat and Instagram. Crystal checked the questionnaire and the interview questions before they were carried out and made significant changes to the survey. She also makes sure that the team's Human Practices are useful to the experiment. Brian, Crystal, Ethan, Cherry, and Amber contributed to writing the team's Wiki. Brian drew most of the figures and diagrams used on the Wiki. We would also like to thank Crystal's father, Mr. Liu, for his enormous help with debugging the Wiki.
Clesia is responsible for constructing and collecting the team's questionnaire, which was checked and analyzed by Crystal. The survey received more than 700 effective responses. Nicole did major works in contacting companies for interviews and visits and co-conducted several interviews with Clesia.
Martin and Alexis are responsible for public relations and fund-raising. They contacted companies and foundations and wrote a Business Proposal. Wilson is responsible for artistic designs, including the front page of the team's Wiki, our logo, and our team jacket. Aileen additionally contributed to designing the jacket.
We received substantial assistance from BAI Yuting and CHEN Shichu when constructing the model for demonstration, for which we're indeed grateful.
We would like to thank in particular our primary PI, Mr. Xu Jiawei, for mediating between our school administration and us; our secondary PI, associate professor Cai Menghao, for generously offered us his laboratory from June to October. Professor Cai also provided us with invaluable guidance throughout the project, including but not limited to helping us making contacts with industry leaders, helping us with experimental designs, and going over our presentation.
Our advisors, Liu Qi and Xu Mingqiang, assisted us significantly in terms of instructing us before and during our experiments. It was through the discussions with professor Cai and our advisors that we consistently improved and refined our experiments. Our mentor Niu Xiaoqi, assigned to us via the After iGEM mentorship program, was very experienced and spared no effort sharing that experience with us. He made us better aware of the requirements of iGEM and helped us make more targeted efforts.
We'd like to pay our tribute to LUO Yan, the first iGEM team leader from SFLS, and now a member of After iGEM. Without him, we won't even start our voyage through iGEM.
To LI Fengting, the former iGEM team leader from ECUST, and HU Jianhan from the Highschool Committee of After iGEM also, for assisting us generously throughout.
Our sincerest gratitude to HU Shibin, LI Qin, SUN Tao, and LIU Xin from the Li Lab at Stanford University, for tirelessly redacting our two modeling papers despite their heavy workload as postdocs. If it weren't for their rigorous examinations and suggestions, our models wouldn't have got refined and perfected to our best capabilities.
We would also like to thank our sponsors, Weistek Foundation and Philanthropic Foundation of Shenzhen. Their financial support helped us acquire critical equipment in our experiments.