Baluku Erikan

 Baluku Erikan is a member of SynBio Africa and participated in iGEM 2018. He works in the laboratory and research sector of SynBio Africa in suggesting possible research ideas to carry out in the field of Synthetic biology to embrace research in Africa. He is responsible for running the Machinery, servicing, and Maintenance of equipment in SynBio Africa.
He has worked on projects including plastic biodegradation in Uganda using PETase and Using Crispr Cas13 technique in designing low cost diagnostic visualized by lateral flow readout.

He is an entrepreneur and have expertise in Marketing and Sales which contributes a lot in marketing SynBio Africa and its services/products.

He has expertise in molecular biology techniques and synthetic biology mainly in engineering organisms to produce Enzymes. His research interest is in using Crispr based methodologies in developing low cost and rapid diagnostics for infectious diseases to aid low middle income countries and remote laboratories. He is a Co-founder of a Mosquito repellent company in Uganda.

He holds a Bachelor’s Degree from Makerere University in Biomedical Laboratory Technology and a certificate in Bacterial and Chronic infection from from University of Copenhagen.