Team

Prof. Benjamin Glick

Since 2016, Prof. Glick has taken on the role of the principal investigator advisor for Genehackers. Throughout the academic year, he provides invaluable guidance for our projects. He also kindly offers us the use of his lab space, enabling us to conduct experiments for the iGEM project during the summer months. Prof. Glick is a cell biologist. During his training, he studied vesicular transport in mammalian cells and mitochondrial protein import in yeast. His independent research has focused on the organization and dynamics of the yeast secretory pathway, and on engineering fluorescent proteins.

Dr. Philipp Ross

Phil is originally from Germany having moved to Long Island with his parents and sister when he was 6 years old. He graduated from SUNY Binghamton in 2013 with a B.Sc. in Bioengineering and went on to work as a bioinformatician in the lab of Manuel Llinás at Penn State University soon after. There, Phil contributed to work in understanding transcriptional regulation in the deadliest human infecting parasite that causes malaria, Plasmodium falciparum. Following his time at Penn State, Phil attended the University of Chicago as a graduate student, earning his Ph.D. at the in 2023. As a Ph.D. student, he investigated the structural and cellular mechanisms of how MHCs engage innate and adaptive immune receptors. He has been an advisor with Genehackers since Summer 2020. Outside of the lab, Phil enjoys running, bouldering, watching anime, playing guitar, and taking care of his axolotl.

Michael Disare

Michael grew up outside Buffalo, NY. He graduated from Cornell University in 2017 with a major in Chemistry and Chemical Biology and a minor in Biology and worked in the lab of Yimon Aye. He is currently a PhD student in the University of Chicago Chemistry Department working in the lab of Joseph Piccirilli and studying the structural biology of RNA. Outside of the lab, he enjoys playing Nintendo games and listening to podcasts.

Shannon Lu

Shannon is from a Taiwanese immigrant family in the South San Francisco Bay Area. She went to the University of California, Davis, where she majored in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and minored in Japanese, and, in the lab of Professor Peter Beal, studied and optimized the potency of chemically modified antisense microRNA oligonucleotides to target aberrantly overexpressed microRNAs in various cancers. As a Ph.D. candidate in Chemistry (Chemical Biology) at the University of Chicago in Professor Bryan Dickinson’s lab, she is now developing translation activating RNAs by engineering their structure and deployment, to enhance the translation of specific proteins which are under-expressed in various disease models. She has been a graduate student advisor with Genehackers since Summer 2021. Outside of the lab, Shannon enjoys cooking, baking, watching anime, playing the piano, exploring Chicago, and journaling.

Kevin Chang

Kevin is currently an MD-PhD student at the Pritzker School of Medicine doing his PhD in Molecular Engineering with Jeffrey Hubbell on developing new cancer immunotherapies. Kevin grew up in New York and went to college at Yale University, where he studied Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry. At Yale, he worked with Farren Isaacs on microbial metabolic engineering and was President of the Yale iGEM Team from 2017-2018. In his free time, Kevin enjoys performing recitals on the carillon in Rockefeller Chapel (a 72-bell instrument made of 100 tons of bronze), running on the Lakefront Trail, shopping at Trader Joe’s, and playing strategy and roguelike games.

Conor Lee-Smith

Conor is currently a Ph.D. student in the Glick lab. Originally from Davis, he abandoned sunny California in favor of the Midwest to attend Northwestern University for his B.A. After graduating, he worked as a research technician in the lab of Laura Lackner at Northwestern where he investigated mitochondrial contact sites in yeast. Now at the University of Chicago, his Ph.D. research focuses on recycling pathways at the yeast Golgi. He has provided technical support for the Genehackers since Summer 2023. Outside of the lab, he enjoys cooking, watching college football, and biking along the lakefront.