iGem Student Spotlight: Kestustis Subacius

Class of 2018

Hometown: Groton, Mass.

Major: Biomedical and Computer Engineering

If it weren’t for his father, Kestutis says he never would have gone into engineering. Though he doesn’t know exactly what his father does (“something with lazers,” he says), Kestutis credits his father, who works for Raytheon, for pushing him to pursue his interest in science.

Kestutis first became interested in biology in middle school, distinctly recalling a video his science class watched about Craig Venter, the first person to sequence the human genome. He remembers his teachers telling him this would have a huge impact on the future, and as he grew up, he got to observe for himself new technological developments like gene therapy.

At BU, Kestutis was a team leader for a Global App Initiative group that built an app for Engineers Without Borders. He also attended a few Bee Keeping Club meetings. After working at an apple orchard throughout high school, Kestutis says he learned a lot about agriculture and the importance of good bees.

With iGem, he will be working on microfluidic design flow and a graphical user interface for it.

“I am excited to actually create something and see it go from start to finish,” he says.

In the future, Kestutis hopes he can continue to do work applying computer engineering principles to biology, as he believes that “ultimately, all our developments in biology will come from computers.”