Application: OScH PCR for the University Classroom
- Your name, and that of your organization (or the organization that will receive funds on your behalf).
- Nicolás Méndez.
- FUNDACEN (fiscal sponsor).
- Name of event.
- Taller de termocicladores abiertos para educación universitaria.
- Email address by which you may be contacted.
- What open science hardware tool(s) will be the focus of your event?
- Open hardware thermocyclers for PCR and related DNA amplification techniques.
- Describe your course or workshop:
- Whom and what it is for: The workshop is aimed at professors from the Universidad Nacional de San Martin (UNSAM), a public university in the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires. They will be introduced to open hardware PCR equipment, and collaborate to adapt the equipment to their molecular biology courses. The goal is to bring Open Hardware PCR to the teaching labs, which operate under a very limited budget, and either rely on third-party equipment or skip the PCR experiment entirely.
- Where and when it will be held: The first edition of this workshop will be carried out in the university’s teaching biolab, at the end of the current semester (June-July 2023).
- How many attendees (IRL or virtual) you expect: 4-5 university professors IRL.
- Do you have plans for ongoing activities after this event OR is it intended that the participants will continue activities after this event? If so, describe the intentions and plans here.
- A successful workshop will provide university courses with OScH PCR equipment for their teaching labs, introducing over 200-400 students per year to open labware technology. If the impact is high, we will consider manufacturing the thermocyclers locally (e.g. at TECSCI) and organize a second edition of the workshop for other public universities (e.g. FCEN-UBA) and/or academic labs (IIBio-UNSAM, IFIBYNE-UBA).
- If not incorporated to a teching lab, the equipment will be used to run workshops for academic labs, with a similar overall objective. This can happen if the university decides to acquire or manufacture the OScH equipment, which will be encoraged.
- What event outputs (e.g. teaching materials, curricula, software, etc.) will you make available? Will these outputs carry an open license?
- A teacher’s and student’s guide will be written in spanish, with instructions for using the OScH thermocycler in university courses. The guides will be made available under the terms of the CC-BY-SA license.
- What you will use the grant for, roughly.
- The microgrant will be used to acquire OScH thermocyclers (either PocketPCR, NinjaPCR, or equivalent) to carry out the workshop. Additional reagents and equipment are already available.
- OScH PCR equipment (option 1): 4 PocketPCR units, 100 EUR each, plus costs from shipping and customs. Local manufacturing can be considered as an alternative if the import cannot be carried out.
- Provide links (references) to documentation or reviews of similar events or works you have executed.
- This is the first time this workshop will be carried out. A similar workshop took place during January in Valdivia, organized by the Chilean reGOSH node; link.
- From personal experience as a university student and teacher, and the ongoing relationships with colleagues at UNSAM, I believe that this will be an impactful workshop. It has the potential to bring open science hardware to the classrooms of several public universities and hundreds of students, which otherwise only interact with closed/proprietary equipment.
Best!