pushing more GOSH projects within and beyond this network, we are happy to announce another project-focused event happening in Luzern, Switzerland, hosted by GaudiLabs and partners.
Digital Biology and Do-it-Yourself (DIY) Communities Gathering
See info on the hackteria wiki
We had many discussions to reach some of our goals of the roadmap, it’s crucial that the network is getting more activated, not only to meet, share and discuss, but to get specific collaborative projects further, drawing on the skills and enthusiasm of the GOSH network.
@gaudi and myself, @dusjagr, had the opportunity in a research collaboration with a local University, to organize and fund smaller community focused events over the last months, and with this last one upcoming, the focus is on Digital Biology, many have maybe seen the OpenDrop, also featured in the roadmap. This time GaudiLabs has reached out to related projects on electro-wetting devices, droplet microfluidics and more. Many developers are also active in GOSH and we met at earlier gatherings.
At day -3 from the start of the gathering I am getting excited to have the Digital Biology Community here in Luzern. We had great meetings in the past in Biofilia Helsinki, Rural Hub Napoli, Kühlhaus Berlin and Co-Lab Paris and the project continues to develop. Just these days Digi.Bio won the Dutch Data Science Prize and Joel Murphy told me that he plans to produce 300 OpenDrops for the BioHacking Village that will be at DEFCON this year (early August, Las Vegas Nevada). And with the first small batch of the new OpenDrop V3 produced we are getting ready for some fun here.
Will try to update what is going on here over the coming days.
Day -2, we got a nice series of lightning talks for the public lab at K25 on Monday:
Bio.kitchen, Open Biolab Munich / Techfest (Rüdiger Trojok)
DigiBio from Biohacking Project to Startup / Experience report HAX Accelerator in Shenzhen (Federico Muffatto)
SciBots from Research to Startup (Ryan Fobel)
OpenDrop Ecosystem and potential Applications (Urs Gaudenz)
The Brainery - Vlog on digital microfluidics (Lucas Zeer)
Exploratory Innovation at Telecom (Alesandro Volpato, to be confirmed)
Now it’s about packing all these crazy machines and travel safely with it. Unfortunately Lucas allready lost his baggage (with coated petri dishes, iron powder, solenoids, iron / ferric steel screws, and a permanent magnet) in transit in Rome. Let’s hope he is getting it back soon.
And here to get you in the mood the newest OpenDrop V3 video:
We had a great start yesterday with Ryan, Lukas, Bengt and Stefan arriving at GaudiLabs. A lot of things to discuss.
Working on a Bio-Server with an array of 18 OpenDrop in parallel. Needs a raspberry pi with a touch display as a hub. Then we tried to electorplate ITO glass with a gold solution to get started with the localised surface plasmon resonance (LSPR). We found that we can maybe “electro polish” the ITO glas to structure it for making transparent digital microfluidic chips. Lucas suitcase with the Ferrobot is still trying to find it’s way. So he is thinking about more new crazy stuff like controlling “chasing droplets” with electrowetting. We discussed the responsibility associated with producing a batch of OpenDrops for DefCon and what could be a first hack for the “conference” batch, like a high voltage “russian roulette”. Lot’s of fun.
Had a nice day of hiking in the Swiss mountains yesterday with a lot of discussions on droplet routing, programming water and compiling micro-python. Back in the lab the suitcase of Lucas arrived and we got a demonstration on moving liquids with magnets. Despite the tired legs and all the sun the hacking continued until late in the night.
Sunday started with some foil coating cooking show. Then Alex and Fede arrived and we moved to the FabLab. Working on spectrometer and laser-cutting shelfs for the bio-server. We got an exclusive look to the inside of the Digi.Bio Box and the Illumina HiSeq…
For the last days we set up a public lab in a gallery and showed our developments in the shop window. We made the Hamamatsu Micro-spectrometer work with the OpenDrop. Invited people from pharma companies joined and we had nice presentations on the future of digital biology and open source scientific hardware. In a panel discussion and a workshop we agreed that defined values and new processes for collaboration between institutions and communities are needed.
PS: I later learned that the “increasing community” was thought about in the concluding session of Electrowetting conference that took place from 18-20 June 2018 in Enschede, Netherlands
Thought I’d make a write-up on that with documentation, source and svg’s and stuff the coming week. Would be nice to also make some characterisation of performance but I think it’s best to document what we have first.
