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Team:TU-Delft/MeetChristopherVoigt
From 2013.igem.org
A Meet with Christopher Voigt
The iGEM Team TU Delft had the privilege of meeting Dr. Christopher Voigt, Associate Professor of Biological Engineering from MIT, Boston on September 2nd, 2013, in Delft. It was indeed a great honour to interact with Dr. Christopher as he was very keen to know about this year’s project by Team TU Delft.
The project ‘Peptidor’ was explained to him in detail along with the questions and queries we had in our mind, asking for his suggestions and views about them. The bacteria-versus-bacteria strategy is a hot research area, but it will surely take time in his opinion before it will be applied in practice. He suggested that a research area much closer to application is the use of bacteriophages. The application part of the project Peptidor which is the use of a ‘band-aid’ to cure MRSA was also explained to Christopher. In his view, such applications have a higher chance of being quickly approved by the FDA. This, since the engineered biological parts are only applied to the skin instead of digested or injected. The meeting also focused on the ‘Synthetic peptides’ engineered by Team TU Delft. Dr. Christopher found this a novel approach in a competition like iGEM. The human practise-based Fluorescent microscopy ‘Do it yourself Kit’ by Team TU Delft was also one of the parts of the project which he found very innovative as it combines mechanical engineering with iGEM.
Finally he wished us best of luck with our journey ahead to the European jamboree, and invited us to visit his department if we qualify to go to Boston.
