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Team:UCLondon/Team
From 2012e.igem.org
Morph
Bioinformatics
Meet the Team!
Board of Directors
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Kong Khai Jien
Chairman and Chief Technologist
Executive Summary, Program Development, Product and Business Idea, Elevator Pitch
Khai is the initiator of CUO. He is a multidisciplinary biologist currently studying PhD at UCL Cancer Research Institute. Although he has background in biology, he took the initiative to pick up computational skills through self-learning. In his final year research project, he spotted the potential of CUO while engineering a pipeline for gene optimization in C. reinhardtii’s chloroplast. Over one year, he expanded CUO from a humble codon usage analysis tool into a versatile open source bioinformatics software. He has a far vision for CUO but nevertheless possesses entrepreneur spirit to rise it up.
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Freedanz Ferdinandz
Chief Executive Officer
Executive Summary, Corporate Structure, Marketing and Sales, Risk Analysis, Elevator Pitch
Freedanz Ferdinandz has an executive and managerial role within the team and is involved in creating the business plan. Studying MEng Biochemical Engineering with Bioprocess Management at UCL he has been involved in various societies within and outside his department as well as projects such as the Abbott Innovation University Challenge where he led the team to the first prize. In combination with his exposure to various industries such as management consulting, patent law and biotechnology during internships, his personality profile and skills in leadership, organization and communication have enhanced a lot. He has been awarded various recognitions including the A-level scholarship initiated by McKinsey, Bosch and Telekom the Sir Derek Scholarship for the commitment to Biochemical Engineering. The wide and diverse industry of Biotechnology is the sector he is aiming to change and lead during his career.
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Alfred Ho
Chief Operating Officer
Executive Summary, Corporate Structure, Marketing and Sales, Risk Analysis, Elevator Pitch
Alfred Ho is a biomedical scientist in his BSc tasked with creating, communicating, executing and sustaining a well-thought-out Development & Growth Strategy evolving round CUO. He sees life sciences as a viable new economy and paradigm shift, finally blossoming and taking off exponentially because of the recent ‘crossovers and fusion’ of precision engineering disciplines (including, but not limited to nanotechnology, electronics and ICT) and robust hardcore quantitative sciences (especially Physics, Chemistry, Applied Mathematics and Computer Sciences) with the hitherto rather raw & primitive biological sciences. He assembled the UCL iGEM:E team, partaking with friends made from UCL iGEM 2011, UCL OpenLabs and LBS to gain insight into the innovative and competitive dynamics of novel marketplaces, not to mention the pleasure of spending yet another productive summer in the companionship of congenial people.
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Ali Versi
Senior Vice President, Web & Systems
Product & Business Idea, Elevator pitch, Web-Design Wiki
Ali is a recent graduate from the prestigious Department of Biochemical Engineering at University College London. Under the leadership of Freedanz Ferdinandz he was part of the team which brought the first place prize of The 2012 Abbott Innovation Challenge to UCL. He is about to start a Master of Research degree in Systems and Synthetic Biology at Imperial College London. He has an interest in using artificial intelligence techniques such as Neural Networks and Bayesian Inference to solve biological problems. Ali has a broad programming skill set and has experience in various systems and frameworks, including Ubuntu servers, Cocoa, GNUstep, GTK+, Qt, Django, Pylons and Sproutcore. He is part of the CUO API development team and is leading the development of the soon to be released CUO website and web app. He reports directly to the Chairman and CEO.
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Anastasia Suprun
Non Executive Director-Finance
Financial Projection, Risk analysis
Anastasia Suprun is one of the actors responsible for pure business and financial aspects. After her B.A. graduation in economics, management and financial services she worked as investment analyst in a German insurance group. Moving from operative to strategic fields she became internal management consultant gaining a wide range of experience in business administration and process optimization. In addition to this she is the COO of a wholesale start-up between Russia and Germany which will be valuable in this project. She is currently doing an Executive Masters in Finance at London Business School.
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Aakanksha Khandelwal
Non Executive Director-Strategy
Market and Competition, Marketing and Sales
Aakanksha Khandelwal was the Chief Strategy Officer for the team and supports the team at the crossroads of business and science. After a Ph.D. in pharmacology she worked at the United States Food and Drug Administration as a clinical pharmacologist in the areas of oncology and hematology. She's now pursuing an MBA from the London Business School and has interned in Roche and Johnson & Johnson working on strategy projects internationally. She enjoys healthcare entrepreneurship and also carries out strategy consulting on the side.
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Eliane Rozanes
Chief Corporate Relations Officer
sponsorship acquisition
Eliane Rozanes is an Msc student in Biochemical Engineering, UCL. Her current position in Morph Bioinformatics is chief corporate relations officer which entails managing and sustaining investor relations. Having worked not only in the biotechnology sector but also in healthcare oriented investment banking, Eliane developed a wide array of skills essential to the maintenance of strong relationships with stakeholders.
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Lee Mun Ching
Chief Communication Officer
Social Media
Mun Ching Lee manages the Facebook and Twitter accounts of the company to spread the word about the CUO software. She is also in charge of the interviews and the workshop report, which formed the content of the Human Practices page of the wiki. A graduate of Biotechnology from the University of Edinburgh, she was a biologist in the Edinburgh iGEM team in 2011, which was one of the three UK iGEM teams to be shortlisted for the World Championship in MIT and won the Best Model and Best Human Practices awards. She has recently completed a summer internship in the Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge thanks to the Student Graduate into Work grant awarded by the Society for Applied Microbiology.
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Ng Kheng Tee
Scientific Background research
Kheng Tee Ng is the one responsible for assessing the scientific and technical feasibility of the product. He is a recent BSc Biotechnology graduate from University College London. Throughout his studies and projects including iGEM, internships in Malaysian R&D labs and Abbott Innovation Challenge, he was exposed and experienced in various lab techniques, extensive literature reviews and scientific presentations. For his work and dedication, he was awarded several recognitions including the faculty medal, first prize Abbott Innovation Challenge, Federation of European Biochemical Societies medal, to name a few. He is going to start his PhD in Biotechnology at University of Cambridge.
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Li Meng
Scientific Background research
Li Meng is a Biochemical Engineering student taking the role as Company Secretary focusing on human resources and outreach. She also fulfils tasks in the field of Marketing Development. Her research experience has been obtained in viral pathogenesis and cancer biology. Apart from her strong passion in scientific research, she is also interested in translating innovations from the bench to commercial products. Being aware of the rapidly evolving relationship between science and industry, she built up the collaboration between London Business School and UCL to seek a better way of fitting scientific discoveries into the global economy. She has also contributed in the development of CUO with background research.
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Mohamad Farhan Bin Mohamad Sobri
Scientific Background research, Communications
As a member of the UCL IGEM Entrepreneurship Challenge 2012 team, Farhan is tasked in contributing to the team wherever possible and required. Particular emphasis is placed on editing the team’s documents, attributed to his proficiency in literature. In the field of Life Sciences, he is most interested in the emergence of both 3rd generation algal based biofuels and tissue engineering in the medical field. He sees iGEM E as a great way to learn how to form a business based on a novel product and subsequently, be able to engage with like minded individuals to improve himself as a whole.
Board of Advisors
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William Graham Richards
C.B.E., Senior Researcher in Molecular CAD
Professor William Graham Richards, C.B.E., M.A., D.Phil, D.Sc, C.Chem, FRSC was Head of Chemistry (1997-2006) at the University of Oxford. He is a Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford and the author of 300 scientific articles and 15 books. He is a council member of the Royal Society of Chemistry and of The Royal Institution. He applied computational techniques to solving quantum mechanical problems in theoretical chemistry at the Physical and Theoretical Chemistry Laboratory, Oxford and became one of the pioneers in the field of computer-aided molecular design for industry, particularly in pharmaceuticals. His work has been recognised by awards including the Mullard Award of The Royal Society, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran Prize, the Italgas Prize and the 2004 Award of the American Chemical Society for Computers in Chemical and Pharmaceutical Research. He is a council member of the Royal Society of Chemistry and of the Royal Institution.He was one of the co-founders (with Tony Marchington) of Oxford Molecular Ltd. which was worth £450 million at its peak but which was eventually sold for £70million. He also helped set up Isis Innovation, Oxford's technology transfer company that has brought around 60 spin-out companies into existence, generating tens of millions of pounds of income for the university. He instigated a screensaver project which exploited idle time on over three million personal computers in over 200 countries to screen 3.5 billion compounds against protein targets. This led to the formation of the spin-out company Inhibox Ltd. where Professor Richards now conducts his research. He donated his shares in the company to a cancer research charity in 2002. He is a non-executive director of IP Group plc.
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Saul Purton
Senior Lecturer and Group Leader of UCL Algal Research
Dr.Saul Purton is the supervisor of the research that sparked the creation of CUO. A central focus throughout his research career has been the chloroplast organelle of plants and algae. He has explored questions regarding its evolution; its biology (mainly photosynthesis, but more recently other metabolic processes such as fatty acid and isoprenoid biosynthesis), its molecular biology (the evolutionary forces that have shaped the chloroplast genome, and how the nucleus coordinates the expression of chloroplast genes), and its genetic engineering and biotechnological exploitation. Almost all of this research has involved the green alga Chlamydomonas as a model system. Indeed, his research is underpinned by the many genetic engineering tools his lab has developed (and are continuing to develop) for Chlamydomonas.
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Andrew C.R. Martin
Senior Lecturer and Bioinformatician in Structural & Molecular Biology
Dr. Martin is best known for his work on analysis and modelling of antibodies and analysis of the effects of mutations on protein structure and function. His group is analysing antibody sequence and structure with a view to understanding how the immune system tailors binding to a given antigen and how antibodies can be humanised or sythesised. Other work in the group has looked at improving sequence alignment for protein modelling and creating automated pipelines for protein sequence annotation. Apart from in depth knowledge regarding bioinformatics software and database development, he also has a vast experience in commercializing his works.
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Simcha Jong
Assistant Professor in Management Science and Innovation
Simcha's research focuses on business development and product innovation in knowledge-intensive sectors, particularly in the life sciences sector. His research engages with traditions in the sociology of organizations and knowledge literature as well as traditions in the management literature focusing on the management of technology, strategy, organizational behavior, entrepreneurship, and innovation policy.
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Henry Taunt
PhD Candidate of Therapeutic Proteins in Algal Chloroplast
Henry is the alpha beta user and the instructor of the first ever research that triggers the emergence of CUO. His PhD is focused on utilizing C. reinhardtii as an expression platform for therapeutic proteins. In particular, he is investigating a potential novel class of antibiotics known as bacteriophage endolysins. These are lytic enzymes from bacterial specific viruses that enable the viral particles to escape the bacterial cell at the end of their life cycle. This is done by breaking apart the peptidoglycan cell wall. He has cloned the gene that encodes one of these enzymes into the C. reinhardtii chloroplast, and shown that the enzyme produced is able to specifically attack a penicillin-resistant human pathogen. At present, he is attempting to purify and characterize this lysin, as well as beginning investigations into two more lysins specific to human pathogens.
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Devaki Ramachandran
Industrial Bioinformatician
Devaki Possesses an outstanding record for achievements and experiences in academic institutions such as the Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences as well as industrial key players such as Eli Lilly, Devaki has knowledge of both the technical and commercial aspects of running such an operation and is a great boost to the team.
Company Timeline
Click the button to see the work completed by each team member
- Sep-2011
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Birth of CUO
Khai wrote the first ever draft of CUO, having no idea of what the software will become one day. He made it for his third year degree research project under supervision of Dr. Saul Purton. The function of CUObeta0.1 is only limited to analyse genome of a host, an extreme tiny version of CUO compared to current one.
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- Mar-2012
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First Release
Following the completion of the dissertation, CUObeta0.8 was released. After that, a website for CUO was launched and the programme was declared open source. Soon, the first group of beta users experienced CUO in first hand, fascinating!
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- Jul-2012
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Team Formation
With release of beta0.9, CUO joined iGEME competition. The initial team was formed by Alfred, Kheng, Li Meng and Khai. Right after that, Aakansha and Anastasia joined in with advisory role followed by Farhan with editorial role and eventually Freedanz joined as CEO. The company sprouted!
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- Aug-2012
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Production
The first business plan draft, elevator pitch and slide deck were completed by the crews. Beta0.91 was released, with significant improvements in UI and functions. CLCBio sponsored 5 workbench licenses to the team. Ali joined the team as core Web Developer and the wiki is in good hands ever after.
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- Sep-2012
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Interaction
The team had carried out aggressive strategies to boost the company's outreach. Four bioinformaticians and three business crews came aboard. Company facebook page, twitter and youtube channel were launched. Visited Chris Rayner from UCL Advance and Sean Ward from Synthace, gained invaluable insight into latest business ideas and technologies.
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- Oct-2012
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Go
Beta0.92 was released. CUO formed its repository on Github. Freedanz and Khai attended Playground event hosted by Index Ventures. The team received sponsorship from UCL Engineering and UCL Advance. Business plan, elevator pitch, wiki page and slide decks were finalized, packed and ready to go for the jamboree!
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Morph Bioinformatics
