Excellent article on Biology Hacklabs in The Scientist

[Patrik D'haeseleer]

Check it out - Megan Scudellari did a wonderful job covering the developing world of DIYbio labs, including BioCurious, Genspace, BOSSlab, LA Biohackers, BUGSS, and more. It's been a while since I've since such a good overview of the field. So much win!

Biology Hacklabs
Fueled by donations, sweat, and occasional dumpster diving, community laboratories for DIY biologists are cropping up around the country.

Patrik

[Avery louie]

Good article!  Its nice to have a more accurate snapshot of what is going on in DIYBIO- other documentation (books, documentary) have a long time constant in production and dont reflect reality as well.

--A

Patrik

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[Brian Degger]

Nice overview of DIYBio-USA.

Thinking about one that might describe DIYBio-EU and DIYBio in the wider world.  

--
----------------------------------------
Brian Degger

twitter: @drbrian

http://makerspace.org.uk

http://transitlab.org

----------------------------------------

[Avery louie]

Good point.  I think next DIYBIO* conference we should maybe sit down and make a document "for the record" just so we all know what is up.  I know we gave talks, but some people talked about things other than the state of the lab, and I dont know if it was 100% recorded.  I am sure Bryan will weigh in on this.

*The one with the FBI

--A

[Bryan Bishop]

On Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 1:17 AM, Avery louie <inact...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I know we gave talks, but some people talked about things other than the
> state of the lab, and I dont know if it was 100% recorded. I am sure Bryan
> will weigh in on this.

Yo, checking in as requested...

http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/fbi-diybio-2012
http://diyhpl.us/wiki/diybio/faq/news

- Bryan
http://heybryan.org/
1 512 203 0507

[shamrock]

It would be nice to have a meeting that was not "sponsored" by the FBI

[Dakota Hamill]

Yeah I think it would cool as well if some sort of meeting ever took place with all the DIY'ers outside of the realm of only focusing on safety issues and potential threats (though I've never been to one of the FBI meetings so I don't know what they talk about, and never read the transcript).  I have gotten to recognize a lot of names over the past few years on here and it'd be fun to finally meet up...but I imagine with people spread out all over the world it would be pretty costly!

[Jeswin]

On Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 12:02 PM, Dakota Hamill <dko...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I don't know what they talk about, and never read the transcript). I have
> gotten to recognize a lot of names over the past few years on here and it'd
> be fun to finally meet up...but I imagine with people spread out all over
> the world it would be pretty costly!
>

Is a large scale teleconference/hangout possible? Maybe hangouts on a
more local level?

[Eugen Leitl]

I would suggest to look into mixed virtual/physical conferences
using https://code.google.com/p/openqwaq/ technology.

Here's an example of conferencing with this technology:

http://telexlr8.wordpress.com/2010/10/25/transvision-2010-october-22-24-2010/

It is also quite useful for virtual-only events:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp1TlhxZQmk

[Nathan McCorkle]

On Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 9:52 AM, Eugen Leitl <eu...@leitl.org> wrote:
> I would suggest to look into mixed virtual/physical conferences

Maybe we could have a day where we co-locate as cheaply as possible
(drive/fly/train to closest regional group), setup projector screens
at the locations for the folks who can't make it physically, have a
1/2 - 1 day long wet-lab or bioinformatics
hackathon/workshop/brainstorm...

I liked the FBI sponsored events, they put together some pretty
interesting (though sometimes TV-drama-like) bioterror scenarios and
challenged the group to think about how they'd respond in a situation
like that. It was a lot like the 'Ask a Biosafety Officer' on steroids
and all day long. My only complaint was that the conference rooms were
too cold, though a sweater helped that out.

I was thinking about this last night, and while it would be OK to just
teleconference, but physical presence is a lot higher bandwidth and
resolution.

I'm interested in hearing more!

--
-Nathan

[Dakota Hamill]

Yeah I'd be more interested in hanging out with people and doing a hackathon or a show and tell of research or projects everyone was working on.  I spend enough time on the computer, the notion of hours of video chat I don't find too appealing. 

[Jonathan Cline]

The journalist forgot to pose the most important questions:

 Why have private individuals been forced to initiate science labs in their homes or in commercially leased spaces when significant tax payer dollars in the U.S. are already spent on high schools, libraries, and community colleges to support "public education"?  Why do high school labs and community college labs remain off-limits to individuals wanting to educate themselves or perform basic experiments as a hobby?  Why aren't individuals able to affiliate themselves, for example, with high school labs, to perform off-hours or weekend lab work when these labs are under-utilized?   What would it or does it take to open up already publicly-funded spaces for use by individual experimenters (i.e. hackers, makers, and biohackers) ?

-- 
## Jonathan Cline
## jcl...@ieee.org
## Mobile: +1-805-617-0223
########################

[Eugen Leitl]

I find travelling expensive, disrupting and effectively a dead time.
If you have a few events/week, many of them global, and you have
no money it's the only thing. Streaming video plastered to
avatar faces and sharing same physical space with collaborative
document editing is pretty immersive.

In fact, we use OpenQwaq even for events in the same geographic
area. I'd rather not burn quality time on a 1-2 h on public transport.
There are not that many hours in a day.

[shamrock]

Excellent question!

[Nathan McCorkle]

On Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 11:49 AM, Jonathan Cline <jnc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> What
> would it or does it take to open up already publicly-funded spaces for use
> by individual experimenters (i.e. hackers, makers, and biohackers) ?

more overhead to support the staffing? (higher tax?)

--
-Nathan

[Dakota Hamill]

I think Jonathan hit the nail on the head, at least with something I can really relate to, and perhaps others can as well.  For people who want to do more than just a pGREEN transformation, and conduct real research, access to a lab is needed.  I looked at some local industrially zoned spaces, but there is no way on my current $15 an hour I could afford even a fraction of floor space, student loan payments, health insurance, gas, etc etc.  Not only that, if I had told the owner I wanted to setup a biotech lab, they would have probably said no.  I even looked into a local incubator, but they charge about $2,000 a month for a small lab bench and some community equipment.  The small business incubator at my school also had no lab space.

 So the next logical choice was to setup in the basement, as I had no garage.  I know I'm not the first to do it, and won't be the last, but to be honest it's not that great.

For a week you might feel like the next Steve Jobs, and the cliche "started in the garage or basement" makes you excited to know that if you ever make it big, you can stay you came from a small place.

 I only use the space because it's the only thing available.  I do PCR with a winter coat on and mittens, it's about 30 degrees down there, and it's not fun to be in.  You ever ran a gel with snow shoes on? Because that's how cold it is!

Unless you go to graduate school, become a post doc, and then a professor, access to your own personal lab won't be cheap.  I also doubt most industrial companies would let a new hire (or even a veteran) spend their resources tinkering around with non-work related stuff.

I've also spent the past 6-8 months trying to get access to my labs back at my old school, and wow has that been a headache!  Even with the departments support, I have to go through the Dean (who just said yes last week) then Provost, then whoever.  Right now my school doesn't have any legal paperwork to be a "visiting scholar" and I went from staying late in the lab while I was a paying student, to being a "liability" when trying to do some labwork after I had graduated.  Hopefully this week I will find out for sure if I can get access to the lab...but it isn't easy, and a lot of people aren't as lucky to live 30 minutes from their old school.  I'm saying goodbye to the basement if it means access to a real lab.

So yeah...the question Jonathan asked is a really good one, and one that has been THE toughest to answer in my personal case, and probably others.

With Jobs and Wozniak and Gates and all the other computer people, all it seemed they needed was electricity, a soldering board, and electronic components.

Science honestly doesn't fit that well into a basement or garage.  You need a lot more stuff: incubator, PCR, centrifuge, pipettes, gel box, freezer, fridge, autoclave, media/reagents, waste stream for chemicals & biologicals...rotovap, HPLC, LCMS, GCMS, NMR, Laminar flow hood, biosafety cabinet, fume hood...etc...etc

I'd BE EXTATIC to have a lower-level tier incubator that offered lab space to biotech or chemistry startups.  The one I know of now costs, like I said, $2,000 a month if not more.  If you could get one for $500 a month it would be amazing, and with 4 people a shared waste stream and some shared equipment would be attainable.

So yeah...kind of stuck between a basement lab and the desire to conduct real research...or back to grad school and maybe in 7-9 years have my own lab. 

[Bryan Bishop]

On Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 11:21 AM, Jeswin <phill...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Is a large scale teleconference/hangout possible? Maybe hangouts on a
> more local level?

IRC, yo. It works out to about 75 people/day now in ##hplusroadmap on
irc.freenode.net, you're welcome to show up. Plus, it doesn't look
like Second Life or openquack.

[Eugen Leitl]

On Wed, Mar 06, 2013 at 02:31:46PM -0600, Bryan Bishop wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 11:21 AM, Jeswin <phill...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Is a large scale teleconference/hangout possible? Maybe hangouts on a
> > more local level?
>
> IRC, yo. It works out to about 75 people/day now in ##hplusroadmap on
> irc.freenode.net, you're welcome to show up. Plus, it doesn't look
> like Second Life or openquack.

It also does no voice conferencing, while showing no face video or shared
video projection screens, especially attached to your avatar face, has no
virtual 3d space where you can build and observe things, and does not allow
collaborative document editing, no does it allow in-world video recording
of events so that it can be shared to 3rd parties via video portals.

Apart from above IRC is just great.

[John Griessen]

On 03/06/2013 02:28 PM, Dakota Hamill wrote:
> If you could get one for $500 a month it would be amazing, and with 4 people a shared waste stream and some shared equipment would
> be attainable.

We have a place called an industrial arts studio here in Austin that is $250/month for
a 10x10 lockable space and use of the open space. No biologists yet, but could be...
Sharing equipment is ad hoc with informal agreements between users and owners.
This place is not a hackerspace -- those tend to have unmanagably large numbers
of users for dealing with equipment, and they only allow a little
2 cu ft. volume of stored set up, not a lab bench. But I've got a lab bench
at ours.

[Patrik D'haeseleer]

Actually, this seems to be part of an entire *issue* focusing on
DIYbio in The Scientist! Here's some of the other articles - all well
worth reading:

http://www.the-scientist.com/?magazines.view/magazineIssueNo/1634/title/The-Do-It-Yourself-Revolution/

The Rebirth of DIYbio
Do-it-yourself science is likely as old as science itself, driven by
an inherent curiosity about the world around us.
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/34457/title/The-Rebirth-of-DIYbio/

DIY in the Lab
Things break in the lab. Here’s how to protect your equipment, and
what to do when it stops working.
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/34467/title/DIY-in-the-Lab/

Sticky Lithography
Scotch tape and a scalpel provide a MacGyver-esque approach to microfabrication.
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/34442/title/Sticky-Lithography/

DIYbio: Low Risk, High Potential
Citizen scientists can inspire innovation and advance science
education—and they are proving adept at self-policing.
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/34443/title/DIYbio--Low-Risk--High-Potential/

Regulating Amateurs
How should the government ensure the safety and responsibility of
do-it-yourself biologists?
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/34444/title/Regulating-Amateurs/

Do-It-Yourself Medicine
Patients are sidestepping clinical research and using themselves as
guinea pigs to test new treatments for fatal diseases. Will they hurt
themselves, or science?
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/34433/title/Do-It-Yourself-Medicine/

Patrik

[Jonathan Cline]

Just ask Craig Fair of the FBI's Counterterrorism Division in San Francisco.   Or FBI Agent Sean Donahue.  Or FBI Special Agent You.   Hey, what has the FBI done for the hackers lately besides throwing a free party to keep tabs without offering party favors?   Imagine how much easier it would be to maintain surveillance on individuals without their permission if hackers enthusiastically adopted going to open labs.

[Bryan Bishop]

On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 12:18 AM, Jonathan Cline <jnc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Imagine how much easier it would be to maintain surveillance on individuals
> without their permission if hackers enthusiastically adopted going to open
> labs.

Yeah, I thought it was weird that all those articles Patrik just
posted were saying things like "Another important task is to encourage
further institutionalization of the DIYbio movement. .... A key first
step is choosing a leader. The NSABB, set up after the Fink Committee
report, has already become a source of expertise in regulation and
safety and is an obvious choice as a central authority to oversee
DIYbio."

I don't think people are getting the message about non-affiliation.

[Pieter]

The key thing in setting up a global conference is having a compelling program. Hackteria is the prime example of that. Marc even manages to attract people to India. The FBI meeting was also interesting enough from many points of view for me to take a week off and fly around the globe. Same thing goes for the meeting in Paris last December.

So let's first sort out a shortlist of cool things to do or discuss. I am sure the logistics and video streaming will follow naturaly.

[Bryan Bishop]

On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 5:24 AM, Pieter <pieterva...@gmail.com> wrote:
> So let's first sort out a shortlist of cool things to do or discuss. I am
> sure the logistics and video streaming will follow naturaly.

How about we just use the internet and tell each other what is happening.

[Avery louie]

In the interest of cross-communication, I would like to invite everyone to virtually attend my project design review this sunday at 1:30 EST.  I think google hangout would be best, but let me know if anyone has a better idea.

---A

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