ATTRIBUTIONS

Our project would not have been possible without the help, support, and advice of our advisors, the people we consulted with, and our team members. We would like to take the time here to recognize and thank everyone who helped us on our journey this year!

ADVISORS

Dr. Brian Ingalls

Professor of Applied Math at the University of Waterloo
Expert in control theory and systems & synthetic biology
Advisor for UW iGEM since early years
Assisted in administrative tasks for iGEM team (registration and finances)
Provided advice during project selection

Dr. Trevor Charles

Professor of Biology at the University of Waterloo
Expert in synthetic biology, root and soil microbes, plant symbiotes

Dr. Marc Aucoin

Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Waterloo
Expert in virus and therapeutic protein production and purification, animal cell culture, and metabolomics.
Provided input on project direction and process modelling and design

Dr. Barbara Moffat

Professor of Biology at the University of Waterloo
Expert in gene expression and enzyme activities in plant metabolism
Provided input on project progress and encouragement when COVID-19 restricted our lab access

Dr. Valerie Ward

Professor of Chemical Engineering and Biology at the University of Waterloo
Expert in metabolic engineering of natural products, therapeutic protein production in microalgae, photobioreactor designs, and bioprocesses using ionic liquids
Provided input on project direction and process modelling and design

Vivian Cheung

Science Coordinator at the University of Waterloo’s Science Innovation Hub
Advised on purchasing and procurement
Reviewed and approved required safety documentation for working in the university space
Ensured all our payments went through and were accounted for. Without her, we wouldn’t be registered for this year’s competition!

Dr. Andrew Doxey

Dr. Forbes Burkowski

CONSULTATIONS

Dr. Susan Baldwin

Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of British Columbia
Studies biological and chemical approaches for mineral processing, including removal of metals and metalloids from mineral processing effluents using anaerobic bacteria
Provided practical advice for dealing with metal waste (such as the insolubility of Fe3+) and suggestions for metals to target with our technology

Lauren Lunquist

MASc Candidate in Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of British Columbia
Studies precipitation of metals from mineral processing effluents using sulphate reducing bacteria
Has extensive industry experience in mineral extraction engineering
Provided estimates of iron content in mineral processing waste streams, resources for wastewater quality guidelines, and general input on the feasibility of our project’s strategy

Patrick Diep

PhD candidate at UToronto
Advisor for the University of Toronto iGEM team and an iGEM judge
Studies metal-binding proteins for bioaccumulation of metals in mining
Suggested modeling metals with docking simulations

Dr. Subha Kalyaanamoorthy

Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of Waterloo
Expert in bioinformatics and computational biochemistry
Provided input on rational protein design strategies and molecular dynamics simulations

Brian Montgomery

Mining Practices and Procedures Lawyer
Suggested potential heavy metals that are desirable to recover from wastewater due to high economic value, compared to our initial metal of interest

Rolando F. Velasquez

Director of Compliance & Operations at Call2Recycle, Inc
Explained the current practices for collecting, sorting, and treating recycled batteries, within a Canadian context
Explained current technology for metal recovery from electronics waste
Explained challenges surrounding recycled materials

Jo-Ann Livingston

Lab Manager at Aevitas
Answered our questions relating to our project’s feasibility and design

Kate Granstrom

Assisted with wiki software development

MEMBERS’ WORK

Alex Chan

Researched suitable metal-binding proteins
Helped HP to research current methods of electronic manufacturing wastewater remediation

Alina Arvisais

Co-managed the lab and design team
Organized a social event for canadian igem teams
Worked on the biological design of the fusion proteins
Prepared workshops/educational materials on basic bioengineering topics
Collaborated with cGEM
Obtained funding for the team- Researched metal and cellulose binding proteins

Alisha D'souza

Worked on environmental aspects such as affected biodiversity including but not limited to plants, aquatic and ground life, soil concentrations, human health effects and more
Turned to focus on electrowinning and MAC copper in drinking water as governed by Ontario
Did some preliminary research into mining, legal aspects, ion exchange, and research on other relevant metals
Assisted with presentation in the Catalyst workshop and reached out by e-mail to a preliminary stakeholder in mining
Assisted in economics research prior to the focus shift

Ana Fernandez

Worked on finding concentration values for different metals in solution
Worked on finding alternative metals for our proteins
Contacted electronic manufacturing and e-waste stakeholders, and government officials for mining
Did preliminary e-waste research, looked into regulations of e-waste in Canada and how end-of-life electronics are recycled/dealt with
Researched metal recycling
Worked on assessing the toxicity of different metals and what the government allows to be released into the environment
Looked at metal and mining regulations in Canada
Contributed to the iGEM blog

Ananya Muralidharan

Researched the role of cellulose as an enzyme carrier in a packed bed reactor
Researched types of chemical reactors
Researched the mathematical parameters required to model water flow

Anthony Dang

Researched metal-binding proteins, cellulose binding domains, and linker sequences compatible with cellulose binding domains
Edited sharable resources
Researched structural protein modelling software, wrote protocol for multi-domain structural protein modelling on Chimera, and used it to model fusions
Researched literature on CopC structure and potential literature-based substitutions
Did multiple sequence alignments for copper-binding proteins and CopC variants

Braeden MacDougall

Researched suitable metal-binding proteins
Researched pre-existing methods for electronics wastewater treatment
Researched common wastewater contaminants, and how to remove them
Helped write and edit pages for the wiki

Christian Singh

Co-managed HP team
Environmental and economic considerations of the project
Contacted and communicated with stakeholders
Worked on the Waterloo iGEM blog
Helped present workshops for Waterloo Engineering Outreach Catalyst program
Researched barriers to equity and inclusivity to STEM
Project implementation research and comparison

Clare Reid

Co-managed HP team
Environmental and economic considerations of the project
Contacted and communicated with stakeholders
Worked on the Waterloo iGEM blog
Ran workshops for Waterloo Engineering Outreach Catalyst program
Collaborated with cGEM
Project implementation research and comparison

Clare Wei

Contacted stakeholders for mining
Researched and documented environmental regulations (CEPA, mining effluent, etc.)
Wrote and edited some snazzy blog posts
Finished EPR summary

Daniel Matlin

Researched ways to model flow in a packed-bed reactor
Researched existing techniques of removing metal ions from wastewater
Researched details about typical wastewater outflow from electronics manufacturing sites
Guided process design microteam in set-up of personal computing environments (Linux) for use of modelling software (FEniCS)

Dylan Perera

Co-managed the math & modelling team
Coordinated collaborations with Tuebingen and OhioState iGEM
Contributed to funding proposals
Coordinated rational protein design work
Helped coordinate process modelling work

François-Guillaume Lemesre

Worked on deriving and solving the process/transport model inside the bioreactor
Worked on the molecular dynamics model
Designed and implemented a compute server that the team can access to run small to medium workloads that are too computationally intensive for personal machines

Genevieve Belford

Researched iron-binding proteins
Researched cellulose binding modules
Researched E. coli strains and vectors
Researched cellulose stability and cellulose packed columns
Wrote pages for part registry: FutA1, CBM2a/CBDcex, FutA2-CBM2a

Gerald Lee

Researched computational protein design software such as Rosetta and Osprey
Evaluated Osprey source code to determine project suitability
Processed and visualized overall and per residue binding energy from Rosetta output

Helen Engelhardt

Researched current metal ion removal methods
Researched chemical packed bed reactor design
Translated project promotion video captions to French

Hillary Leung

Designed the wiki
Wrote our wiki accessibility handbook

James Stapleton

Reached out to stakeholders in early project stages to help determine important metals to focus on remediating
Researched tax-based funding of metal remediation
Liaised with Process Design team to find design parameters for product, and applied it to a cost-benefit analysis
Provided evidence of cost-effectiveness in re-collecting and selling remediated metal after filtration
Researched current methods of electronic manufacturing wastewater remediation and compared cost-effectiveness

Jeriann Hsiao

Co-managed the lab and design team
Researched suitable metal-binding proteins
Contacted stakeholders in the industrial wastewater treatment industry
Presented project at national iGEM events
Led wiki and accessibility toolbar design and development
Helped produce iGEM project promotion video

Jessica Zhang

Researched protein docking software such as Chimaera
Looked into the ATCUN motif and did MSAs for copper binding proteins to identify potential residues to modify
Studied coordination geometry to better understand the factors that influence specificity and affinity of protein binding to metals

Jessy Song

Researched protein modelling and design tools, specifically how to use Rosetta
Worked on script to mutate proteins and do scoring analysis as an initial way to evaluate the mutated proteins

Joshua Hanneson

Researched Ferric Uptake Regulator proteins
Researched experimental design techniques to quantifiably measure cellulose binding
Generated complementary quizzes for our shareable resource presentations
Worked on iron & cellulose binding protein design on Benchling

Katherine Walker

Researched suitable Metal Binding Proteins
Researched methods of measuring copper binding
Assisted with the compilation of a contact list and questions for potential stakeholders

Kingsley Wong

Researched plausible reactor types
Developed equations and modelled them to better understand transient and steady-state behaviour
Conducted general research for parameter determination
Wrote introduction documents to transport phenomena

Lorenzo Pérez

Researched suitable metal-binding proteins
Performed multiple sequence alignment on copper- and nickel-binding proteins to better understand their coordinating residues using Geneious.
Researched nickel-binding proteins and suggested multiple amino-acid substitutions to decrease Cop-C nickel affinity

Michael Astwood

Co-managed the math & modelling team
Assisted with collaboration with Tuebingen and Ohio State iGEM teams
Contributed to funding proposals
Coordinated work on molecular dynamics model
Coordinated work on process modelling, particularly the transport model

Michael Lam

Researched suitable metal-binding proteins

Morgan Cordell

Researched metal-binding proteins
Researched experimental procedures for determining binding constants
Designed cloning method for implementing our parts in an expression vector
Formatted parts for registry
Assisted in writing part pages for wiki

Paige Aldridge

Prepared funding proposals and presented funding PowerPoints/pitches

Patrick Thomas

Found stakeholders (policy advisors) from the Ministries of Energy and Mining
Wrote/edited emails sent out to said stakeholders
Summarized regulatory documentation from the Government of Canada during policy research phase (toxicity, allowable conc.)
Obtained and summarized EPA regulatory documentation for Math & Modelling
Preliminary research into bioremediative methods in metal reclamation and semiconductor manufacturing process
Wrote a couple blog posts on surveying and contributed to editing

Renessa Gomes

Researched suitable metal-binding proteins
Researched affinity tag candidates
Contributed to experimental design for protein purification and measure of iron binding
Researched of cellulose columns prepared and applied in literature
Contributed to identifying suitable residues for mutation in Mst-Copc for increased Cu(II) affinity/specificity

Riley Henderson

Researched suitable metal-binding proteins
Contributed to experimental design of CopC
Contributed to identifying suitable residues for mutation in Mst-Copc for increased Cu(II) affinity/specificity and Ni affinity/specificity
Identified key CopC residues to mutate in PyMOL and analyzed these energy scores to narrow down candidates to pass onto MD
Researched pH conditions to run column under to ensure stable protein

Sarah Hardy

Researched suitable metal-binding proteins
Researched affinity tag candidates
Researched E.coli strains and vectors
Researched cellulose stability
Researched effect of sodium azide in buffer and alternative
Helped write and edit pages for the wiki

Serena Hacker

Coded the wiki and accessibility toolbar

Sergiu Pocol

Evaluated protein redesign software such as OSPREY
Researched algorithms to prune input space to redesign algorithms through the use of in silico alanine scanning

Shiv Naik

Researched suitable metal-binding proteins
Researched an assay for measuring reaction kinetics of CopC in copper binding
Assisted in preparing files for molecular dynamics simulations of CopC

Taran Layal

Contributed to discussions for the Human Practices team
Researched economic Considerations for metals in Canada to determine feasibility of project and metal extractions
Researched early mining initiatives before shifting focus on copper extractions
Worked on Waterloo iGEM blog

Team:Waterloo/Attributions

ATTRIBUTIONS

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