Team:Newcastle/Team

Vincent is amazing, he radiates positivity and he has a black belt at being good in everything from cooking delicious food to excellent lab skills. Also, Vincent is like a "Wikipedia of genetics", if anyone has a question about it, he is the person who will give great advice about it. In his free time Vincent gives brilliant piano lessons, and plays it beautifully himself, also dreams of being a GREAT king in the future. Furthermore, he has an amazing 30 pairs of shoes collection, which would be enough for 3 iGEM teams! Recently, during iGEM, Vincent become proud and loving father of Betty and Berty (the first L-forms he grew on a streak plate).

If you need help modelling, James is the guy you need to talk to. James is a second year Geneticist who hopes to work in bioinformatics in the future. This chirpy chappy has a passion for cooking and has treated certain iGEMers to his delectable risotto. When not working on iGEM or cooking fabulous food you will find James at the university squash courts with friends.

A trampolining, opera-watching, guitar-and-sometimes-piano-playing, dangerous-cyclling, wine-drinking, cheese-eating, gourmet chef – Yana also sometimes works on iGEM.

As one of the two computer scientists on the team, Matt has been vital to the design and production of our wiki. Matt has also cheerfully immersed himself in the labwork. Matts main computing interests are game design and bio-informatics. Outside academia, Matt enjoys playing and coaching basketball and is president of the University basketball club.

Details about Viv go here

One of the more experienced members of the team, Chris' extensive lab skills and resourcefulness have made him the first person other members turn to when an experiment goes wrong or a protocal needs adjusting. Found in the lab at weekends and late into the night, Chris' enthusiasm and maturity have enabled him to successfully juggle iGEM with the end of his Masters project. When not in the lab, Chris can be found playing, watching and even simulating football, and is also something of a movie aficionado

Justas is one of our computer scientists in the team and provides a lot of help with the computing and modelling parts of our project. Even though he doesn’t have much background in biology, he tries his best to help us all the time. Justas has a signature laugh which cheers everyone up after a long day. Throughout the day, he also likes to share haribos and cookies with everyone on the team to keep everyone full. If you see Justas really tired in the morning, it’s probably because he has been up at night playing poker. Justas suggested that our iGEM team be called Newcastle Mafia. This name was luckily voted out but he was devastated.

Alina is our only architect in the team but has thrown herself into the lab work with lots of enthusiasm. Her strengths are in her strong eye for design (as seen in the team logo), her straight talking attitude and supportive and friendly nature. She also enjoys hikes, cheese, wine, watching Miss Marple, cherry tea, trips to the cinema and photography.

Rob can often be seen rapidly skateboarding to Uni in his beanie hat and funky T-shirt in fear of being late. His sociable, friendly, approachable, funny bearded face can always be seen in the lab.

In his stressed state, PLEASE feed him chocolate in order to return him to his normal relaxed state.

Izzy rhymes with cheesy and easy, but one couldn’t be more wrong here! She prefers cheese and wine to tea and cake, and we don’t blame her. She’s sweet enough to sugar a dozen cakes, while adding a bit of zest for the flavour!

Izzy’s the life of every party. Thanks to her no one can ever forget it’s Friday!

A softly spoken, contemplative chap, Geoff brings a more reflective quality to the team. his flexibility has allowed seamless movement between themes, with Geoff equally comfortable growing and experimenting on his plants or modelling the L-forms growing in them. A keen hiker, he is the vice-president of the university's fellwalking society.