Much Whooping Brings UVa to Final Four in Synthetic Biology

Tuesday, October 16, 2012 at 05:03PM
http://dept.biology.virginia.edu/news/

Congratulations to UVa's iGEM team for their success at the Americas East regional iGEM Jamboree in Pittsburgh, PA earlier this month. The International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition is an annual contest in synthetic biology, an emerging field at the interface of biology and engineering in which designer molecules, viruses, and cells are engineered from standardized parts to solve human problems. Team Virginia was selected as one of four finalists among 44 teams and was awarded a Silver Medal.

This year Team Virginia, working with the laboratories of Profs. Erik Hewlett (Medicine & Infectious Diseases) and Kimberly Kelly (Biomedical Engineering), designed a rapid assay for the detection of whooping cough, a current and urgent health problem in the developed world, including the US. With the win at the regional, Team Virginia proceeds to the global championship at MIT this November and will use the next few weeks to further develop their project and to raise funds to attend the championship.

Representing UVa in the regional competition were eight students from the College of Arts & Sciences, School of Medicine, and School of Engineering and Applied Science - Joshua Fass (Biomedical Engineering), Jacqueline Grimm (Biology), Syed Hassan (Computer Science), John Hubczak (Chemical Engineering), Joseph Muldoon (Biology & Chemistry), Shaun Moshasha (Chemistry & Physics), Omar Raza (Biology), and Alexander Zorychta (Biomedical Engineering). iGEM Advisors are Profs. Keith Kozminski (Biology), Inchan Kwon (Chemical Engineering), and Jason Papin (Biomedical Engineering).

More information about the team is available at http://www.seas.virginia.edu/students/vgem/