1. Name of your organization
Association Hackuarium
2. Reliable email address
rachelaronoff@gmail.com
3. Tell us about your organization
Hackuarium is a community laboratory in Switzerland, which aims to democratize research. We mix together biology and technology for life-long learning and fun, and were initially founded more than seven years ago. From bioart to public health, Hackuarium member projects push our community lab and inspire many. Just before the end of 2021 we submitted our request to be recognised as a public service group (exonerated from taxation), in order to more readily access various funding opportunities, and we are hoping to learn more in this regard soon. In the meantime, we are trying to resurrect our community more, ‘post’ pandemic (even if it is a bit early to call it that), and continue to encourage open science, which is about much more than just open access publications, and better science communication.
4. Does your organization have representation for a marginalized demographic due to factors such as, but not limited to, race, ability, place of birth, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class situation or other identification? If so, how?
Our Swiss association is open to everyone and is membership-based, with very low monthly fees for 24/7 access to the lab space (20chf/month) and even a policy of supporting members’ projects with microgrants. We want to invite everyone to discover the world of biohacking, and follow the GOSH ethos and DIYbio.org ethical codes. Additionally, we have a particular focus on representation of women in science. Our newer ‘coding for all’ project is also focused particularly on disadvantaged groups, but this still in early stages (even though a first event around Bob3 building and programming was promising.). The pandemic has affected our community greatly, of course; and we are currently hoping to get people activated again to come to our weekly #OpenHackuarium events. We have colleagues not only from many countries but of varying orientations and abilities, and celebrate diversity at all levels to encourage representation of marginalized demographics.
5. How would your event address GOSH’s values of diversity and inclusion?
We plan to have diverse participants and will specifically invite people that support a local Women in Science organisation to join in for the initial workshop event introducing soldering and fun electronics. We hope amazing members of the Hackteria network will join in, too.
6. What is the event about, and what do you want to achieve with it?
The event is about getting members of the public excited about participating in open science projects, by providing hands-on experience in our community lab. The ultimate goal is to attract more people to open science and open science hardware. In particular, we propose to bring people together to make fun electronics (i.e. TV-B-Gone) in an initial hacking event open to all and ultimately build, develop, and test the latest OpenFlexure microscope for high resolution epifluorescence imaging.
We were very inspired by our participation in GOSH2018 in Shenzhen, where we first learned about the OpenFlexure microscope, potentially the perfect platform to make our ‘Cheek Cell Chip’ project for public health take off! Before the pandemic, we were already beginning to develop a method to automatically detect micronuclei, and were able to observe fluorescent nuclei on the OpenFlexure epifluorescence build (v6), but not the desired comet tails, when the pandemic suddenly pushed all our plans aside (to instead focus on our ‘Corona Detective’ R&D).
We now propose an initial electronics event for generating inspiration for open hardware electronics. The in-person workshop (tentative date 25-June-2022) will get people excited about electronics in general, and will be animated by the ‘original hacker’ Mitch Altman, who loves to teach and share, giving people the sense of confidence and accomplishment to explore and find what it might be that is meaningful for them. No high priest, he feels that we all need time and permission and opportunities to explore, to become engaged, to become motivated to find what is meaningful. In our open science environment, this necessarily includes science. Mitch Altman had already agreed to come visit Hackuarium from Berlin for a week of workshops in collaboration with local FabLab friends, and the initial event at Hackuarium will be open to the general public. It will be aimed particularly at girls and women and also newbies to the biohacking scene, from ages 9-99.
Subsequent workshops to enable proposed DIT builds of the epifluorescence system of the OpenFlexure version 7 microscope will be based particularly around people who are interested in the ‘cheek cell chip’ project, and could also allow virtual participation from anywhere in the world. We will be making a complete v7 system, with lenses of higher magnification and fluorescence sensitivity (20x FluoTAR) and a higher resolution RaspberryPi camera, to provide more sensitivity than before (for detection of comet tails). This will also allow collaboration for developing an ideal ‘top level’ for the system, substituting the current ‘stage module’ with prototype ‘check cell chip’ fluidics. This would allow imaging of the cell sample for assessment of micronuclei, followed by the fluidics treatments and a short electrophoresis step necessary for the comet assay, and then another round of imaging to visualise the comet tails from the same sample of cells, providing information about the levels of DNA damage found in the cell sample. The idea is to also jump-start the project after its long hiatus.
Documentation of all of the work (with videos of events and video blogs) will provide long-term access to the outputs of these efforts, allowing many people to engage even after the fact, perhaps to really fulfill the dream of the ‘cheek cell chip’ project (with everyone collecting data on their baseline levels of DNA damage, and seeing what happens after various steps are taken – like eating blueberries or dark chocolate, or going running)!
7. How will your event contribute to advancing OPEN SCIENCE HARDWARE?
By getting more people excited about electronics and collaborating to make OpenFlexure microscopes together, we hope to not only bring more attention to this super precision microscopy system but to assess its utility for data acquisition in this context.
Making sure that open science hardware provides reliable data is also very important. For instance, we have already done initial side-by-side tests of the ‘pocket pcr’ system developed in the Gaudi-Labs, with our old ABI pcr machine in the lab. The spectro project from Hackuarium also has to be put through its paces, in comparison to the old lab spectrophotometer. For research we need reproducibility.
We imagine that more people will get excited and maybe the .org kits will be also in more demand, benefiting all the amazing people like Richard, Julian and Valerian, who have been working on its development.
8. How does your event address each item in the review criteria table above?
The items in the review criteria table are addressed by this proposal. The proposal will impact local development of the GOSH mission, and give people the experience of doing open science, that they might want to share and take further, for broader long-term impact. To do this all is feasible, and we hope that before next fall we would thus have several prototypes to compare.
9. Which of the three levels of funding would you like to apply for? (USD $3000, $6000, or $9910)
$3000, even though this proposal is for more than just the initial event and includes funding for three high-resolution, epifluor builds of the OpenFlexure scope.
10. What is the funding for? Describe your budget. List what you are going to spend it on and how.
This is the current budget request:
Budget Table (details of estimate basis available in links)
| Train: Berlin to Lausanne (round trip) | 250 |
| Workshop venue (twice in large space in coop) | 100 |
| Food and Drink | 150 |
| Electronics Kits from MA for soldering initiation and fun | 100 |
| Honorarium for MA: Saturday workshop event | 300 |
| OpenFlexure main costs + Arduino/motors 100 x3 | 300 |
| 20x FLUO-TAR objectives 400 x3 | 1200 |
| Comar filters for Epifluor (based on 2019 costs) 100x3 | 300 |
| RaspberryPi 65 x3 | 200 |
| Train fares for OpenFlexure build people (inside Switzerland) | 200 |
| Sum Total Requested | 3100 |
To note: This total leaves out funds for accommodation and other plans for Mitch’s visit, which will be covered by a microgrant from Hackuarium and support of our FabLab friends.
11. How will you share the outcomes of this event. What documentation or other outputs will benefit the open science hardware community as a whole? (videos? photos? a how-to or other education materials? innovative hardware designs?)
As mentioned above, we will document our builds and experiments extensively, of course, in the Hackuarium Wiki and Github, but also via networks in multimedia formats. With bioart&design so gorgeous, hopes to make others excited to try more, too, seem justified. The special electronics workshop and subsequent gathering(s) for the OpenFlexure builds (after orders are received and printing done) will be also recorded, and we propose vlog style presentations, too.
12. Can you confirm that at least the primary output from your event will be published under an appropriate open source license as described above in this announcement?
Yes, definitely.
13. Are there any conflicts of interest that you wish to declare? (a conflict of interest does not always mean disqualification!) As President of Hackuarium and founder and CSO of AGiR!, I, Rachel Aronoff, have personal interest in not only open science efforts but in seeing both the community lab, Hackuarium, and the cheek cell chip project succeed.
Rachel Aronoff, PhD
Directrice Scientifique
AGiR! Action pour l’intégrité Génomique via la Recherche!
www.genomicintegrity.org
#genetics #risks
@AGIRgenomes
Présidente et
Responsable Biosécurité
Hackuarium
20 Route de Crochy, 1024 Ecublens
www.hackuarium.ch
wiki.hackuarium.ch
#DIYbio #citizenscience #DoItTogether
#OpenHackuarium #CoronaDetective
@hackuarium