OUR TEAM

Janet Xu

Wet Lab Lead, Human Practices

MSci Biochemistry '25

Very easily bribed with cookies.

Yuliia Anisimsova

Wiki Dev Lead, Wet Lab

BSc Biotechnology '25

Has not seen the light of day since she started working on the wiki.

Usrat Nubah

Dry Lab Lead, Wet Lab, Finance Officer

MSci Biotechnology '26

Got so lost in the side quests she still hasn't found a way out.

Zainab Atique-Ur-Rehman

Human Practices Lead, Wiki Dev

BA Linguistics and Social Anthropology '26

The teams emotional support pet.

Devika Shenoy

Wet Lab, Dry Lab, Human Practices

BSc Biomedical Sciences '27

Passionate about sports anime and focus groups ONLY.

Jia Run (Thomas) Dong

Science Communication Lead, Wet Lab, Dry Lab

BSc Medical Biochemistry '26

Hi I'm Thomas and I love to yap.

Damian-Andrei Ungureanu

Research Lead, Wet Lab

BSc Biochemistry with Entrepreneurship '27

Lambda Red aficionado

Francisco Correia

Wet Lab, Finance and Sponsorship Officer

BSc Biotechnology with Entrepreneurship '27

Hi I'm Francisco and I like to travel.

OUR ADVISORS

Dr Jack Connolly

Jack is a Research Fellow in Actinomycetes at the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology. He specialises in the biochemistry and genetics of natural product biosynthesis in Streptomyces.

Faisal Giwa

Faisal is an EPSRC BioDesign CDT student and certified popcorn connoisseur with an interest in developing translatable protein biotechnology. "If it's not protein, then I don't care."

Erik Hanko, PhD

Erik is a Research Fellow in Biomanufacturing at the University of Manchester. He has been team advisor and iGEM judge since 2021.

Gabriel Ragala

Gabriel is a 4th Year Enzymology PhD student and certified Parisian tourguide for when we go to the Jamboree.

Dr Alec Banner

Alec is Research Associate at Future Biomanufacturing Research Hub. He is currently developing novel strains for increasing metabolic substrate availability.

OUR PIs

Eriko Takano, PhD

Professor of Synthetic Biology and Director of SYNBIOCHEM

Prof Eriko Takano is a pinoeer in synthetic biology research, and specialises in researching microbes for antibiotic production.

Rainer Breitling, PhD

Professor of Systems Biology

Prof Rainer Breitling specialises in using computational approaches and applications of bioinformatics for synthetic biology.