Meet the team: Joachim Larsen
One of two creators of the DeNovocastrians & advisory member
Introduction
Joachim Steen Larsen aka. The Three Headed Dragon. Jo is well accomplished at 30 years old- holding both a bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Biology/Biotechnology from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. He’s also currently doing a PhD in Biological Sciences at the University of Newcastle.
“I grew up in Denmark and did my undergraduate in Copenhagen. When I finished my undergraduate and graduated with top marks from my Master’s degree, I moved to Australia.”
Why did you join/start the team?
“I joined DeNovocastrians as an advisor because I have a passion for synthetic biology and the opportunities it gives us as a society. I find it fascinating to engineer living organisms like bacteria and plants, and make them capable of producing everything we need, like medicine, biofuel, biodegradable plastics etc. Only the human mind can limit the possibilities synthetic biology give us. Besides that, I love to explore new ways to utilise microorganisms, and what better way to do this than joining the world of iGEM and Australasian Synthetic Biology Challenge?”
What’s your role in the team?
“I am an advisor for the DeNovocastrians. I’m also known as the Three Headed Dragon, as I am usually the one that starts breathing fire towards the team when they get a bit lazy 😊”
What inspires you?
“My passion for science and synthetic biology comes from the opportunities it gives us. My Danish teacher always told us that “Nature is conservative”, meaning that Nature doesn’t make something, without also making the opposite. This way of thinking that Nature has a solution to everything fascinates me, and started the fire for biology and science when I was younger. It is still this fire that my teacher started that burns and drives me to find and engineer the solutions to the everyday problems we are experiences, whether that being producing a more sustainable production platform or finding and producing the drug that kills cancer cells.”
What have you accomplished with the team so far?
“I have been involved with the DeNovocastrians since its start in 2020. With the team so far, we have explored the ways microorganisms are degrading aromatic compounds such as benzene and xylene. In the 2020 iGEM competition, we managed to get a silver medal, which is good for a newly started team which participated for the first time ever. Further, with the team we have managed to push the way that our university looks and thinks about science and synthetic biology.”
What do you do outside of this?
“In between experiments and science, I sometimes just want to escape and become a truck driver. The freedom of just driving feels like a dream. Or maybe to become a fish… Anyway — science is pretty much all I do.”
