Join Ginkgo as a DNA Padawan!

Everyone here at Ginkgo had a great time in grad school. It was where we discovered Synthetic Biology, the coolest emerging engineering discipline around and were lucky to work with an amazing community of folks - the synth bio working group at MIT/Harvard. So we know how important it is to choose the right school - and even more importantly the right lab and project. That's why we've decided to offer 1 year internships to college seniors. By working with us for a year, you'll get valuable hands-on research experience, interact with researchers from leading schools around the US, and gain a unique perspective on Synthetic Biology that will serve you well in grad school. So if you're headed to grad school but interested in experiencing the Ginkgo approach to synthetic biology before starting, please apply here. Note: You don't have to be heading to grad school to apply for the 1 year internships. Also, a little known fact -- once you've been accepted, most grad schools will let you defer entry for a year.

Current Padawans

	Jernej Turnsek received his M.Sc. degree in Biotechnology from University of Ljubljana, Slovenia where he was part of the Grand Prize winning iGEM team in 2010. At Ginkgo, Jernej is working on organism engineering. Aside from being a synthetic biologist, he dreams of becoming an Ironman one day.
	Jen Liu is back at Ginkgo working on taking our DNA assembly pipeline to the next level. She completed her undergraduate degree in Biology at Dartmouth and is planning on medical school next year.
	Jeff Lou received his BS in Chemical Engineering at Stanford where he studied the intricacies of electrochemical devices. In the test pipe, Jeff operates and improves the turbidostats for lab evolution. Outside of Ginkgo, he prefers to scale large rocks in the evening sun.
	Aaron Heuckroth received degrees in Microbiology and Classical Civilizations from UC Davis and is the only padawan to have ever written and performed heavy metal songs about Julius Caesar. He was recruited out of the 2011 UC Davis iGEM Team and is now working to improve the efficiency of cell transformation for our build pipeline.
	Tomas Mikula is in the middle of a PhD program in Computer Science at Charles University in Prague. Before joining Ginkgo, he also worked on various projects at R&D Centre for Mobile Applications, Czech Technical University in Prague. At Ginkgo, Tomas is working on data management and analysis in the test pipeline.
	Harry Schwartz recently finished a masters in Computer Science at William & Mary, focusing on distributed neural networks. At Ginkgo he's working on CAD/CAM support for genome engineering.
	Albert Wang recently received his degree in EE/CS at MIT. Previously, Albert helped build the original version of the software that coordinates our lab processes. Now he's back at Ginkgo helping us build a bio lab that Tony Stark would love.
	Jason Fuller joins us after having spent two years at Ligon Discovery where, as the first employee, he assembled their lab, and transferred his knowledge of the fabrication, use, and analysis of small molecule micro-arrays. Prior to Ligon, Jason worked in the Chemical Biology program at the Broad Institute. Now Jason is improving Ginkgo's DNA assembly pipeline.
	Francis Lee received his degree in biology, chemistry, and French from UIUC. Aside from participating in iGEM his entire undergraduate career, Francis spent time during the day in a Salmonella genetics lab with Dr. James M. Slauch, and spent his nights fighting crime as an EMT. At Ginkgo, Francis works to improve the DNA assembly pipeline.
	Jenny Cheng recently received her degree in EECS from MIT. She worked at the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab which works to develop video games as an alternative route for disseminating the results of academic research. At Ginkgo, Jenny is working on our CAD/CAM system and process automation.
	Brian Burnley recently graduated from the Citadel with degrees in Biology and English Lit. An entrepeneurial spirit, he launched the Citadel's 1st iGEM team. At Ginkgo, Brian manages and operates our automated plasmid purification process, develops our DNA assembly pipeline, and monitors his Winogradsky column.

Alumni

	Matt Gethers holds the distinction of being our first DNA Padawan (he's a Rhodes scholar now, but wanted to start with the important stuff). Matt built the worlds largest BioBrick assembly while at Ginkgo: 30kb and 16 parts. Matt went on to finish a Master's in philosophy, politics, and economics at Oxford and is now in grad school at Caltech.
	Daniel Kim brought our first automated plasmid purification process online and named our first dino-bot, Sue! Daniel is currently finishing up his degree in EE/CS at MIT.
	At Ginkgo, Charles Fracchia left behind a legacy of strange equipment names, culminating in a liquid-handling robot named after a mythical peacock. He also did a lot of the early heavy lifting on our DNA assembly technology. He recently completed his undergraduate degree at Imperial College London and is at the Wyss Institute at Harvard. Charles is in grad school at the MIT Media Lab.
	Ryan Harrison built the first version of the CAD software that automagically designs DNA parts so they can be synthesized and assembled. He is currently a graduate student in the NIH Oxford Cambridge Scholars program and is training to be a Jedi Knight.
	Holly Moeller invented novel approaches to genome engineering at Ginkgo (among other things). She has a masters in biological oceanography from MIT and is currently in the Stanford graduate program in Biology.
	Along with his golf swing, Raven Reddy worked on automating the construction of DNA at Ginkgo. He continued building DNA in Ron Weiss's lab at MIT and now is finishing his degree in biological engineering.
	Hubert Hwang is an MIT computer scientist who came to Ginkgo to learn about biological engineering. He worked on the informatics that underlie all of our automated processes in the lab. Remember the hacker in Jurassic Park? He's like that guy -- but nicer. Hubert went to get a a Master of Arts in Teaching in math education at Boston University and is now teaching middle school math in Everett.
	Jeremy Chang recently received his masters degree in EE/CS from MIT where he built a two-photon microscope. At Ginkgo, Jeremy was the robot-whisperer, bending Biomeks to his will. He also developed novel approaches for sequence specific DNA purification. Jeremy is now in grad school at Yale.
	Yohann Lacotte joined us from the Ecole Superieure de Biotechnologie de Strasbourg where he participated on the 2010 iGEM team. At Ginkgo, Yohann optimized the efficiency of Ginkgo's processes for DNA assembly.
	Daniel Taub studied CS and BME and then received his M.Eng. in EE/CS from MIT where he worked in computational photography, fabrication, and UI design. When he was 16, he started a computer consulting company and simultaneously became involved in theatrical lighting design which eventually led to his work on the MIT LightBridge. At Ginkgo, Daniel worked on an open-source test tube scanner software called Scantelope.
	Jane Lieviant received her degree in Biochemistry from the University of Washington. She joins us from Herbert Sauro's lab where she worked on the stability of genetic circuits over multiple generations. At Ginkgo, Jane helped run our DNA assembly pipeline and became a master part designer.
	JT Sauls received his MS in Bioengineering from UPenn. He's an avid adherent of Frank Herbert's Dune and the science that lies within. At Ginkgo, JT built turbidostats so that the bugs do the optimization work for us. JT is now living and working in Germany before heading to grad school at UCSD next fall.
	Spencer Glantz received his BS in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from UPenn. Spencer co-founded the first UPenn iGEM team in 2011. At Ginkgo, Spencer worked on wetware development to keep our DNA assembly pipe well fed (otherwise it starts eating people). Spencer is in grad school at UPenn.
	Alyssa Henning received her degree in BE from Cornell where she was introduced to thai tea, tai chi, and chai tea. As a founding member of Cornell's iGEM team and researcher in Jonathan Butcher's lab, Alyssa made BioBrick parts and imaged avian embryonic morphogenesis via micro-CT. At Ginkgo, Alyssa worked on genome engineering. Alyssa is now in grad school at Penn State.
	Daniel Cahoon received his degrees in Chemical and Physical Biology and Computer Science from Harvard. He did his undergraduate thesis in the Girguis lab doing micro-bio-geo-chemistry "wrench science". Dan has now graduated to a Jedi at Ginkgo and works on making Ginkgo's CAD/CAM system awesome.
	Jess Liao received her degree in Biology from Wellesley. She's an expert in the swimming performance of Bluegill Sunfish Ecomorphs and growing kidneys from scratch! At Ginkgo, Jess worked on our genome engineering pipeline. She is now in dental school at her top choice program, the UPitt research center in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon.
	John Sexton received his degrees in ECE and BME from Carnegie Mellon. At Ginkgo, John worked on our automated assay platform so we can test stuff as quickly as we can build it. John is now in grad school at Rice.
	Eli Moss graduated from Brown University with a BS in Computational Biology. At Ginkgo, Eli was in charge of maintaining and improving the robotics of the DNA assembly pipeline. Now, he's at the Broad Institute working in computational biology.