Team:Acton-BoxboroughRHS/Team

• Chris Kuffner


Title: Founder, transformation lab master
Chris is now a rising senior at ABRHS who is intrigued with the potential of synthetic biology and has a passion for STEM. He thinks that he is chilled out, but he is attracted to volatility. When he isn't trying to get himself killed on skis or wheels, he is working under a heavy course load so he can enter this controversial industry. Chris initiated this team with help from Mr. Mathieu, has done a large chunk of the research for this project and specializes in the transformation lab.

• Akash Kapoor

Akash is one of the team's first freshmen. He does find his way into the world of genetics, climbing the ladder of the double helix despite all the pressure from deadlines, video conferences, and registration dates. His coming to the Jamboree will reassure the team that he's still in the game.
Epithet: The wanderer

• Madhuri Jois


Madhuri Jois is a rising junior at Acton-Boxborough Regional High School. She is passionate about different fields of scientific research, including synthetic biology. Her interest for hands-on research is nourished through the iGem club. In addition to the sciences, Madhuri also volunteers at Emerson Hospital, and enjoys reading in her free time.
Epithet: Poster Guru

• Charles Taussig
• Rachel Tao
• Katherine Liu
• Barry Huang
• Ben Stern

My background interests are primarily biochemistry. I am mostly interested in neurobiology, but I also like synthetic biology. I also really like coffee, which is why I was so interested in our project. For our project, I primarily did research on synthetic biology and the processes we would use, as well as research of coffee.
Epithet: Head Researcher

• William Huang


I'm in 10th Grade and I contributed to the project by doing the lab grunt work.

• Victoria Chen

• Wynne Yao
• Justin Hong
• Tara Jawahar
• Benjamin Pervier
• Anusha Purakayastha

With sincere thanks to our coach and mentor, Aaron Mathieu.

Aaron Mathieu is a biology teacher at Acton-Boxborough Regional High School in Acton Massachusetts, where he has been teaching since 2000. During his 18-year teaching career he has taught biology (including Advanced Placement Biology), bioethics, chemistry, physics, astronomy, physical science, forensics, and environmental science. Mr. Mathieu has been working with the BioBuilder Foundation for 3 years and is a BioBuilder Master teacher.

Our team has divided our project into several task forces: the wiki group, the project group, and the initial lab group. The wiki group is for the integration of information from all three groups, regarding lab data, and research, and also works to make sure all guidelines are met. The project group is the primary researching force, which collects all the data about what enzymes and system we'll need. The lab group carries out the laboratory steps in order to synthesize the bacteria which out project is based on. Also, we frequently have periods of time where team members do work outside of their main sub-group, which makes out progress run faster.

Hangouts

Not only did we 'hangout' in real life after meetings for recreation, we also had Google Hangouts. These series of Google Hangouts helped out team meet and make a lot of progress during the summer, since we couldn't necessarily have a place to meet in person.

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