Meet the team: Naomi Cooper
Student member & “social media overlord”
Introduction
I’m one of the two people writing these articles, so might as well start with me hey? I grew up in Goondiwindi, before moving to Port Macquarie at age 6 where I finished my secondary education in 2017. Gap years followed and I eventually moved to Newcastle in 2019 to get somewhere a little bigger than my hometown. Which is where I started my biotechnology degree at UON in the last half of 2020 amidst covid.
So, why did I join the team?
I joined because I’m very interested in all things science and this was a perfect opportunity to develop more skills and connections- so of course I’m going to take that opportunity! Also the people are lovely and it’s a good way to make some friends.
What’s your role in the team?
I’m the ~social media manager~, I also come into the lab often to do wet work and help out with all the other things involved in competing in Ausynbio and iGEM.
What inspires you?
Well since I was a little kid I’ve always wanted to know literally everything and it made me really upset when I obviously found out I couldn’t be omniscient! But since then I’ve directed this into all things science on my quest to satiate that childhood need. In conjunction with this, I’ve always found that the thing that makes me feel the best is helping others in meaningful ways, so I figured with my degree I could do that on a wide scale and make a meaningful difference to people’s lives if I find a good avenue for it.
What have you accomplished with the team so far?
So far I’ve developed a great amount of lab skills and techniques with the aid of our always helpful supervisors. With the team itself, we’ve made good progress in developing our BTEX degrading organism- characterising and understanding how we can implement our native BTEX degrading genes into our E. Coli to make an efficient and usable bio-remediation tool.
What do you do outside of this?
In my spare time I play video games (overwatch, COD and an endless steam library), guitar and bass, I also do a bit of photography, binge a bit of Netflix and of course hang out with my friends as well :)
