Team:BOKU-Vienna/Team

Team:BOKU Vienna - 2020igem.org

This is Us!

Our team consists of 13 students from different STEM subjects, assisted by two highly supportive principal investigators, one amazing advisor from last year’s team and five very helpful instructors. With great motivation and lots of commitment, we worked eagerly on our project for the last months. We are proud of our work, ourselves and each other!

Oona Jung

Oona is the Student Leader of our team and has her nose in everything. She keeps an overview over all the aspects of the project and makes sure the deliverables are ready in time. Besides this, she helps researching, working in the Wet and Dry Lab, organizes meetings and collaborations, and writes texts for newsletter and Wiki.

Field of study: Drug discovery and development

I joined the iGEM team because I think it's a great opportunity to develop our own project and bring our idea to life. I'm also keen on international exchange with students from this research field.

Lukas Pucher

Lukas is our Wet Lab Manager. Together with Katja, he takes care of everything that happens in our lab and keeps the overview of our experiments. This is associated with a lot of research which he does together with Lukas Pranter. Additionally, Lukas is very involved in our collaborations and writes texts for our newsletter.

Field of study: Biotechnology

I joined iGEM because it is great to see my own ideas become reality.

Katja Starnberger

Katja is highly involved in everything! Not only is she managing our Wet Lab experiments together with Lukas Pucher, but she also participates in the research for our experiments and our Dry Lab, she helps planning the collaborations with the partnering teams and she writes texts for our Wiki and the Newsletter to our sponsors.

Field of study: Biotechnology

I joined iGEM because of the great opportunity to see what it means to develop a project from scratch and to connect and work with people from different fields of studies.

Lukas Pranter

Lukas is our Head of Research. He coordinates the necessary research and develops the plan of action for our time in the Lab. Through this, he is highly involved in our cooperation with our partnering iGEM team of TU Delft.

Field of study: Biotechnology

I joined iGEM to get a better understanding of project development. Furthermore, I want to network and of course, I am very interested in the topic.

Dominik Wiesinger

Dominik is our Head of Finances. He takes good care of the relationship with our sponsors and the acquisition of new sponsors for our project. He is also responsible for keeping track of our financial situation and the ordering of lab equipment. Thanks to Dominik, all of our resources are available once we need them! Besides this, he also is a valuable researcher while planning the experiments, works in the lab and writes for our Wiki.

Field of study: Biotechnology

I enjoy challenging myself. iGEM provides a great opportunity to hone one’s skills in research, lab work and project management. All, while thriving to help other people and working together with great people.

Benedikt Haslinger

Benedikt is responsible for our newsletter. He makes sure all the texts are collected in time, all the sponsors are mentioned, and the formatting looks appealing. He is also the author, director and cutter of all our videos. Additionally, he helps with the research and lab work.

Field of study: Biotechnology

I am interested in learning about all the processes involved in realizing a life science project from start to finish. Also, I would like to gain more practical experience as well as meet people sharing similar interests.

Katharina Ostertag

Kathi is our Social Media Manager. She is mainly responsible for all our posts on Facebook and Instagram. She animates our videos and takes care of our collaborations with other teams: for this she plans and realises meetings and activities with our partnering teams. Additionally, she is a great help in the lab!

Field of study: Food Science and Biotechnology

iGEM is a great opportunity to experience the steps that are necessary to realize your own research projects.

Rajmund Kasbauer

Rajmund seems to know everyone in the field of Life Science. Thanks to him, we were able to have a meeting with the Start-Up PhagoMed and Dr. Gattringer and received valuable feedback about our project. He is also helping Lukas Pranter with our research.

Field of study: Molecular Microbiology, Molecular Ecology and Immunology

I joined iGEM to learn more about project management and idea development in life science.

Samuel Oberreiter

Samuel is responsible to keep an overview over the medal criteria and make sure we plan our schedule accordingly. Besides this, he designs our images, helps Markus with the modelling part of our project and is involved in researching.

Field of study: Biotechnology

I joined the iGEM team because it's a great opportunity to gather experience in setting up projects from scratch and, of course, to get to know a lot of cool and interesting people.

Markus Strasser

Markus is our Dry Lab Manager. He is responsible for the parts of our project that we want to model in silico. For this, he is involved in a lot of research and keeps close contact to the Dry Lab Manager of our partnering iGEM team TU Delft.

Field of study: philosophy, now working in the fields of software- and bioengineering

His curiosity for living systems led him to join Oxford Nanopore as a software engineer. Now he is spending his time learning about bioengineering and therefore joined the iGEM team.

Simon Wutzl

Simon is our IT Manager. He takes care of the design and implementation of our website and wiki.

Field of study: Agricultural Sciences

He joined iGEM because of his interest in web design.

Stella Karagiorgou

Stella is our Assistant Social Media Manager. She helps Kathi in developing our posts for Facebook and Instagram and takes care of our collaborations. She is very involved in the planning of meeting and activites.

Field of study: Drug discovery and development

I think it is a great opportunity to meet people from different backgrounds and work with them as well as develop your own project and gain great experience from it!

Harriet Schober

Harriet is helping with literature research and writing for our Wiki .

Field of study: Food science and biotechnology

I joined iGEM because I am convinced that the topic of phage therapy is a promising answer to medical problems such as antibiotic resistance. Furthermore, I want to see this idea become a reality and in doing so work with like-minded people.

Principal Investigators

Martin Altvater, Dipl.-Biol. Dr.sc. ETH Zürich

Throughout the whole iGEM period Martin, our primary PI, supported us with his expertise. He gave us safety instructions prior to our lab work, he helped us with organizational stuff and was always available when we needed him. Especially during our laboratory weeks in summer he provided us with guidance when we needed it.

Diethard Mattanovich, Univ.Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr.nat.techn.

Diethard, our secondary PI, was our supervisor and always available for our questions and concerns. Apart from supporting the continued participation in this event, he also helped us with his expertise and experience in finding a fitting project.

Advisor

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Theodor Simak

Theo is our student advisor. In 2019, he was a participant in the iGEM competition himself and is, therefore, the perfect advisor to share his experience from last year with us. He always has an open ear for our problems and a tip on how to fix it.

Instructors

In the beginning of the iGEM season our instructors gave lectures about different aspects of synthetic biology. Through this, we received valuable information on different aspects of the iGEM competition which were extremely helpful for the planning phase of our project. Beyond that, we could approach them in case we needed some advice or guidance.

  • Michael Sauer, Ass.Prof. Dipl.Natw. ETH FH-Prof. Dr.

  • Brigitte Gasser, Assoc. Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr.

  • Alexandra Graf, Dr.

  • Jürgen Zanghellini, Dipl.-Ing. Dr.

  • Hans Marx, Dipl.-Ing. Dr.