2018 BioHackathon
JUDGES & SUPPORTERS
Biology without Barriers
Livio Valenti
Co-founder, VP of Policy and Strategy
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Livio guides the company’s global health strategy and forging partnerships with governments and global health organizations. He previously worked for the United Nations to improve economic and social conditions in developing countries, advising government clients and international financing institutions in the identification, appraisal, and financing of large investment projects and backstopping a diversified portfolio of economic and social development projects. He holds an MPP from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where he was the recipient of the Empedocle Maffia Fellowship, an MS in International Management, and a BS in Economics from Università Bocconi. Livio was named by Forbes one of the 30 under 30 individuals likely to change the world for his commitment in improving global health and one of the 10 under 40 (PrimiDieci-Under40 2014) most distinguished individuals with Italian nationality by the Italian-American Chamber of Commerce and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
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This profile has been provided by Vaxess.com, Harvard Kennedy School.
Monique Brewster, Ph.D
Harvard University, MCB Preceptor
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Monique completed a bachelor’s degree at MIT in Biology with a chemistry minor and went on to complete a PhD in Rachelle Gaudet’s Lab here in the MCB department. In her research, she studied two ion channels, TRPA1 and TRPV1, which play integral roles in peripheral neurons as sensors of noxious stimuli. Her work focused on using biochemistry and structural insights to gain a better understanding of how those channels are regulated by small molecules.
In general, she enjoys considering biology on the molecular level, where proteins can be viewed as tiny machines following familiar principles of chemistry and physics to accomplish complicated tasks. As a preceptor, she works with Life Sciences 1a, the large introductory-level course that integrates chemistry and biology to highlight the molecular view of cellular processes and some diseases. In the spring, she works with upperclassmen in MCB 65: Physical Biochemistry, which dives a bit deeper into biochemistry, thermodynamics, and (the beauty of) structural biology.
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When not teaching or doing research, you are most likely to find her reading a good sci-fi book or enjoying the wealth of music available in the Cambridge area. In addition to being a big fan of musicals, she also sings and plays Sabar, Senegalese drums.
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Code for Life
Raahil Sha
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Raahil is a co-founder of Z Imaging, a startup that uses augmented reality in-surgery to make operations safer, faster, and more accurate. He graduated from Harvard last year with a B.A. in Computer Science in the Mind, Brain, Behavior Program. Having done research on epigenomic factors affecting cancer at UT Dallas and on reconstructing the human connectome at Harvard, Raahil has extensive experience in computational biology and is interested in the intersection of technology and medicine. While not working, Raahil can be spotted roaming around Boston with a camera taking photographs of the city from rooftops and other tall places.
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Ben de Bivort, Ph.D.
Harvard University, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology
Thomas D. Cabot Associate Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology
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Benjamin de Bivort is a neuroscientist in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and the Center for Brain Science at Harvard University. His lab is trying to understand why animals behave differently from one another. What genes and neural circuits determine an individual's behavior? How do these mechanisms constrain the evolution of behavior? His work in neuroscience has exposed him to a lot of computational biology and signal processing.
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Defending against Tropical Diseases
Karthik Viswanathan, Ph.D.
Director of Research
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Dr. Viswanathan is a founding scientist and Director of Research at Visterra, Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company. As a founding scientist, he helped establish the Hierotope™ platform at Visterra that has led to discovery and development of multiple therapeutics. He is an inventor of VIS410, an anti-influenza A antibody currently in phase II clinical trials and VIS513, a cross-serotype neutralizing antibody against dengue that is in pre-clinical development. Prior to Visterra, Dr. Viswanathan was postdoctoral researcher at MIT. Dr. Viswanathan received his B. Tech from Indian Institute of Technology and Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Viswanathan is an inventor on over 20 patent and patent applications and has authored over 35 publications in top tiered journals including Science, Cell, New England journal of Medicine and Nature Biotechnology.
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This profile has been provided by AntibodyEng365.
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Betsy Trainor
VP of Development
Betsy Trainor is responsible for commercialization strategy, NGO partnership strategy, and other development efforts at Aldatu Biosciences. She has over 10 years of experience working in emerging markets, focusing on the validation and implementation of infectious disease diagnostics. Prior to Aldatu, Betsy was the VP of Business Development at Daktari Diagnostics, an HIV diagnostics company. She also led the validation and implementation of Ebola diagnostics in West Africa on behalf of FIND (Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics) in collaboration with the World Health Organization.
Betsy has a B.S in Human Development from Cornell University and is a graduate of the Product Management Program at Berkeley Haas School of Business.
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This profile has been provided by Aldatu Biosciences/team.
Eco-Sustainability
Jie Zhu, Ph.D.
Organism Engineer
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Jie Zhu is a biologist and foodie interested in food substitutes and biotechnology. She works with engineers and scientists to explore the secret of food ingredients and fasten the biology engineering. During her PhD at UC Riverside, she worked on metabolic engineering of yeast for aromatic esters production. After graduation, she did a summer internship at Amyris. She is currently Organism Engineer at Ginkgo Bioworks, an organism design company for customers across multiple markets.
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Jason Munster, Ph.D.
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Jason Munster has a PhD in environmental sciences and engineering from Harvard. In addition he has both a masters and bachelors in Earth and Planetary Sciences from Harvard. After graduating undergrad, he worked as an investment banker at JP Morgan. He returned for a masters and PhD to focus on topics like energy and climate change. He has founded two startups including one to reduce deaths worldwide from air pollution. His publications range from hardware to measure climate change feedback effects, including subsequent heavy data analysis, to constitutional law white papers on interstate controls of air pollution.
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Supporters
Aldatu’s drug resistance diagnostics matches HIV patients with effective drugs and saves resource-limited healthcare systems money. Aldatu works at the forefront of HIV genotyping, diagnostics, and the understanding of drug resistance.
Ginkgo's designs custom microbes for customers across multiple markets. They build their foundries to scale the process of organism engineering using software and hardware automation. Organism engineers at Ginkgo learn from nature to develop new organisms that replace technology with biology.
Vaxess is committed to developing the next generation of vaccines, immunotherapies, and diagnostics that lead to better patient outcomes and are more easily distributed around the world. They pioneer the development of silk biomaterial technologies.
Visterra Inc. is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on applying its novel Hierotope platform to identify unique disease targets and to design and engineer precision antibody-based biological medicines against such targets that are not adequately addressed with conventional approaches.
Z Imaging is a Harvard iLab-affiliated startup that uses augmented reality to let surgeons see inside of their patients, making image-guided surgeries safer and faster.​
Additional Sponsors and Acknowledgements
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Hack Life is made possible by the SEAS department and Harvard Undergraduate Research and Fellowships Office!
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We would like to thank Neel Joshi, Jessa Piaia, Rachel DeLucas, and Keith Karasek at SEAS for helping our iGEM club make the Biohackathon possible.
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We'd also like to extend special thanks to Greg Llacer at URAF for allowing us to hold our Biohackathon in the heart of the summer undergraduate research village at Harvard College.
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Thanks also to our awesome iGEM board and club members who have made this idea into reality!
