USD 500 microgrants available for workshops, short courses

1. Your name, and that of your organisation (or the organisation that will receive funds on your behalf).

Nurul Izzati, Universitas Teknologi Sumbawa

Roudlotul Jannah, SynBio 101, iGEM Community

Sakti Subramanian, SynBio 101, iGEM Community

Richard Jiang, SynBio 101, iGEM Community

2. Name of event. Make another post with another event name if you have another event.

Hands-on workshop: Synthetic Biology application on plastic waste degradation

3. Email address by which you may be contacted.

Nurul - nurul.izzati@uts.ac.id

Jannah - rjannah.id@gmail.com

4. What open science hardware tool(s) will be the focus of your event?

  • Foldscope for microplastics and planktons observation of Brang Biji river water sample. The goal is to raise the awareness of the highschool students about the plastic waste effect on river water.
  • SynBio 101 kit and modules for synthetic biology technique introduction. The high school students will be given the opportunity to learn about synthetic biology in tackling the plastic pollution problem. They will also get the opportunity to experience the lab work using the kit.

5. Describe your course or workshop, whom and what it is for, where and when it will be held, how many attendees (IRL or virtual) you expect.

Samota or Saleh, Moyo, and Tambora have been appointed by UNESCO as one of the biosphere reserves in 2018 that is located in Sumbawa region, West Nusa Tenggara. It requires effort from the government and the local people in preserving the biosphere. However, the poor plastic waste management has been one of the biggest problems in the preservation. The lack of awareness of people about the plastic waste management is one of the contributing factors of plastic accumulation in the environment such as found in Brang Biji river that will end up in Sumbawa coastline.

Therefore, the Faculty of Life Science and Technology, Universitas Teknologi Sumbawa intend to raise the awareness of plastic waste to the local community starting with high school students through hands-on workshops and river clean up in collaboration with SynBio 101, Synbio.id, and Foldscope Network ID. There will be 50 high school and 25 undergraduate students participating in this event that will be held on 3-6 May 2023 at Universitas Teknologi Sumbawa and Brang Biji river. The students will have the opportunity to observe microplastic in the river water using Foldscope as they learn the importance of minimising the plastic usage on a daily basis. This activity will be followed by river cleaning around the Brang Biji river stream and introduction of synthetic biology application on plastic waste degradation. The students will also get the opportunity to try the SynBio 101 kits and get familiarised with the synthetic biology application.

6. 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.

SynBio 101 and Synbio.id are planning to do similar events collaborating with other institutions from other cities in Indonesia. In the near future, possible collaboration will be done with SynBio UB (synthetic biology community in Brawijaya University) that is currently trying to establish a synthetic biology community. We are also planning to reach out and collaborate with the local organisations that are concerned about plastic waste that have regular programs in giving education about waste management to the local communities. The target audience will be high school students that will be given the opportunity to observe river water with Foldscope and learn synthetic biology from the modules and kits.

7. What event outputs (e.g. teaching materials, curricula, software, etc.) will you make available? Will these outputs carry an open licence?

The students will be introduced to the main problem, plastic pollution in the Brang Biji river on day 1. The activity is followed by the water sampling from the river and observation using Foldscope on day 2. They will create a poster about their findings and present it on day 3 that is continued with an introduction about synthetic biology using the SynBio 101 kit and module.

SynBio 101 will develop a module and kit for the workshop. These materials are part of SynBio 101 open hardware project creation that will be distributed to students. For this event, the modules and kits are customised to fit the goal and schedule of the workshop.

Details:

The instructional modules include:

  1. Introduction to Synthetic Biology
  2. Introduction to Plasmids and Circuits
  3. Introduction to Viruses and Phages
  4. Concerns about Biotechnology
  5. Biosecurity and Biosafety

The modules hardware (H) workshops include:

  1. Gel Electrophoresis (H)
  2. Cell and Plasmid Preparation (H)
  3. Transformation Protocols (H)
  4. Polymerase Chain Reaction (H)

Example of Past Implementation (Modified Scope):

8. What you will use the grant for, roughly.

The grant will be used on kit production (containing the modules). We will produce 10 kits that will be used by the participants (in groups) with each kit costing approximately 50 USD to manufacture. In total, we will need 500 USD to produce the kits.

9. Provide links (references) to documentation or reviews of similar events or works you have executed. School coursework or projects can be listed, even social media posts. Anything to give a sense of what you’re about and your ability to successfully conduct this course or workshop. To keep this short, just the links and their descriptions will do.

Works by Our Heads and Members

1. Your name, and that of your organisation (or the organisation that will receive funds on your behalf).

Tafia Sabila Khairunnisa, Foldscope Network - Indonesia Fellows (organized under Meaningful Design Group)

2. Name of event. Make another post with another event name if you have another event.

Jimbaran Fishing Communities Looking Closer with Foldscope

3. Email address by which you may be contacted.

tafiasabila@gmail.com

4. What open science hardware tool(s) will be the focus of your event?

Foldscope (https://foldscope.com/)

5. Describe your course or workshop, whom and what it is for, where and when it will be held, how many attendees (IRL or virtual) you expect.

Last year, Foldscope was introduced to Indonesia during the Bali Fab Fest event. As part of our commitment to ensure an ongoing evangelization of Foldscope, while supporting marine conservation efforts through citizen science movement across coastal communities in Indonesia, the Foldscope Network Indonesia is planning to conduct a series of workshops for the fishing communities in Bali. The aim is to expand on our pilot outreach to the Jimbaran-Kedonganan fishing communities, starting by hosting a 3-day workshop in May 2023 at the traditional fishing village of Jimbaran beach. The workshop will include the following activities:

  • Day 1: Plankton Net Workshop - Making frugal plankton nets out of local materials
  • Day 2: Foldscope Workshop and Water Sampling in Jimbaran Beach (refer to this video)
  • Day 3: Microcosmos Workshop - Documenting and sharing with community

We expect to involve at least 30-40 fishermen across 10 fishing groups around the Jimbaran bay, with at least 1 community leader and 1 younger fishermen from each group. And though specifically intended for the fishermen, we allow any other interested stakeholders in the fishing communities to take part in, so we will prepare more foldscopes as buffers.

6. 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.

Definitely. As a representative for Foldscope Fellows in Indonesia, our mission is to spread as many foldscopes as possible across Indonesia, with strong emphasis to enable direct mass data collection from the local & coastal indigenous communities and include them in the marine conservation efforts. To achieve that, our approach is by first establishing a system in the community where this movement could run and continue organically. This workshop serves as a kickstarter that meant to be an ongoing event. In this particular one, we aim to plant a seed to nurture more citizen science activists within the Jimbaran fishing community. That is why we encourage and prioritize the community leads and also the younger fishermen from each fishing groups in Jimbaran, so they would be the anchors that help spread this further within their communities. We will keep engaging, monitoring, and offering support to the fisherman through Whatsapp group. As a continuation of this particular workshop, we plan to conduct upcoming rounds of workshops with the same community but to include other users, like the fisherman’s children and university students and researchers from Bali’s Udayana University, in order to set the ecosystem that enables this citizen science movement to really happen. Besides, we also plan to spread this movement to other potential coastal communities in Bali, such as the traditional fishing village of Tianyar, Karangasem, Bali, where a local organization there happens to also train local fishermen in the reef conservation effort.

7. What event outputs (e.g. teaching materials, curricula, software, etc.) will you make available? Will these outputs carry an open licence?

We will make a video documentation about the whole workshop, a microcosmos post, as well as an open ‘Citizen Science Guidebook’ for fishing communities which will highlight:

  • How to make frugal plankton nets
  • Collect water samples & towing guide
  • What to make of their findings

8. What you will use the grant for, roughly.

9. Provide links (references) to documentation or reviews of similar
events or works you have executed. School coursework or projects
can be listed, even social media posts. Anything to give a sense
of what you’re about and your ability to successfully conduct this
course or workshop. To keep this short, just the links and their descriptions will do.

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  1. Your name, and that of your organisation (or the organisation that will receive funds on your behalf).

Ebuka Ezeike, Project Manager at Access 2 Perspectives

  1. Name of event. Make another post with another event name if you have another event.

Introduction to Arduino kits in a scientific context

  1. Email address by which you may be contacted.

ebuka@access2perspectives.org

  1. What open science hardware tool(s) will be the focus of your event?

A digital multimeter and an
Arduino Starter Kit which contains the following:
· Arduino UNO board.
· Breadboard.
· LED (Bright White, Green, Red, Yellow, Blue, and RGB)
· LCD Alphanumeric.
· Wooden base that can be easily assembled.
· Solid core jump wires.
· Stranded Jump wires of RED and BLACK color.
· 9V Battery
· Resistors of 220 Ohms, 560 Ohms, 1kOhms, 4.7kOhms, 10kOhms, 1MOhms, and 10MOhms
· Small DC Motor of 6/9V
· (40 x 1) Male Strip pins
· Red, Blue, and Green Transparent Gels
· Diodes
· The Capacitors of 100uF
· Optocouplers
· Small servo meter
· Piezo Capsule
· Push Buttons
· Tilt Sensor
· Potentiometer
· Phototransistor
· Temperature Sensor
· MOSFET Transistors
· H-bridge Motor Driver
· USB Cable

  1. Describe your course or workshop, whom and what it is for, where and when it will be held, how many attendees (IRL or virtual) you expect.

The workshop will be organized for high school students between the ages of 15 and 18. It is designed to have three sessions.

In the first session, the students will be introduced to all the components of the Arduino Starter Kit including their functions.

This workshop is designed as a pilot and introductory course to inform the participants about possible applications in a research context as Open Science hardware.
These applications include building interactive tools in the laboratory like robots and how and where to use sensors and switches to control light and motors. Some other examples of sensor application that would be mentioned to them are as used in doors in labs, homes, offices and cars.
These would serve as a good background knowledge which they can build on as they go higher in their education and in the field of open science hardware.

In the second session, the students will be taught how to build a circuit on a breadboard using the electronic components from the Arduino kit, like the breadboard, the LED, wire, battery etc. This would give them the idea of how current flows in real life connectivity in our labs, homes and offices.

In the third session, the students will be taught how to test for continuity (current flow) on a breadboard using a digital multimeter.

After the sessions, each student is expected to practice what he or she has been taught.
The workshop will take place on the 29th of April, 2023 in a high school in Abuja, Nigeria. Fifteen students (boys and girls) are expected to physically take part in this workshop.

  1. 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.

The workshop is meant to be an ongoing event. This will help the students to build on what they have learnt about open science hardware tools at the foundation level. As we hold subsequent workshops, it will serve as a platform to train other beginners in various high schools in Nigeria and generally promote open science hardware.
Through our work at Access 2 Perspectives and AfricArXiv, we are well connected within the AfricaOS and GOSH community. We will subsequently explore collaboration opportunities with research oriented applications of Arduino powered tech-driven research hardware, e.g. with
MBOALab, https://www.mboalab.africa/
Open Hardware Makers, https://openhardware.space
LAB Hack, LabHack · AfricArXiv

  1. What event outputs (e.g. teaching materials, curricula, software, etc.) will you make available? Will these outputs carry an open license?

All the written documents and instructional materials used for the workshop will be made available at africarxiv.org under the CC BY SA 4.0 license.

  1. What will you use the grant for, roughly?
    The grant will be used to provide all the materials needed to hold a successful workshop.

The breakdown is as follows:

$ 50 - $150 for planning and facilitation
$300 - To purchase 3 Arduino starter kits and 3 digital multimeters. The students (15) will be divided into three groups.
$50 - Paper notebooks and other writing materials for the participating students.

  1. Provide links (references) to documentation or reviews of similar
    events or works you have executed. School coursework or projects
    can be listed, even social media posts. Anything to give a sense
    of what you’re about and your ability to successfully conduct this
    course or workshop. To keep this short, just the links and their descriptions will do.

I had experience working with Arduino tools in my university laboratory where I built circuits and used the digital multimeter to test for continuity (current flow through a conductor) in my second year Physics course at the Federal University of Technology Minna Niger state, Nigeria

Your name, and that of your organisation (or the organisation that will receive funds on your behalf).

Siyona Mishra, Richard Hu

iGEM at Hopkins

Name of event. Make another post with another event name if you have another event.

Hardware Workshop and Design (Hopkins iGEM)

Email address by which you may be contacted.

igemhopkins@gmail.com

What open science hardware tool(s) will be the focus of your event?

Applications to synthetic biology and bioengineering. We are one week from narrowing down the focus area for Hopkins iGEM 2023. Our current plans are:

  1. A bioreactor with environmental control and measurement (e.g.: temperature and pH probes)

  2. One of the following:

  3. An apparatus to produce/spin nanofibers, (e.g. through electrospinning)

  4. A cell counter (e.g. a hemocytometer, or possibly a fluidics approach)

As a peer-mentored student team, we would aim to build the tools from provided hardware components, apply them to further synthetic biology design projects, and train undergraduate members in the process of hardware fabrication.

Describe your course or workshop, whom and what it is for, where and when it will be held, how many attendees (IRL or virtual) you expect.

Workshop Date: April 23rd, 5-7 pm EST (tentative date during April)

Attendees: ~15-20

The primary audience of our workshop is going to be current and future iGEM undergraduates at Hopkins. After this week, we will be selecting one of the tools listed above and working on designing a prototype or building an already available version to compare to what we end up designing.

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.

After the workshop, students would have the opportunity to apply their design to real synthetic biology experiments. With permission and due acknowledgment, their efforts may support our year-long iGEM project, culminating in a showcase at the international 2023 Jamboree event.

What event outputs (e.g. teaching materials, curricula, software, etc.) will you make available? Will these outputs carry an open licence?

All designs will be open-source. We will post outputs and their design process to our team wiki; this will be publicly accessible from iGEM 2023.

What you will use the grant for, roughly.

Order hardware components and any other training materials for the workshop. This can include

$450 - hardware materials (microcontrollers, Arduino, etc.)
$50 - general office material (paper, flyers, etc.)

Provide links (references) to documentation or reviews of similar events or works you have executed. School coursework or projects can be listed, even social media posts. Anything to give a sense of what you’re about and your ability to successfully conduct this course or workshop. To keep this short, just the links and their descriptions will do.

Intersession (3 week) Course at Johns Hopkins University

EN.580.150 Synthetic Biology Design Syllabus - Google Docs

We held a 3-week course on Synthetic Biology design with 8-10 students combined in person and virtually. The syllabus is linked above and specific to hardware, students learned how to build and understand a photometer used to measure bacterial colonies.

WetLab Training
Wetlab 1
Wetlab 2

We conducted wet lab-associated training for ~10 people for 5 days and covered techniques such as MidiPrep, PCR, and gel electrophoresis as well as how to use devices such as a thermocycler and nanodrop machine.

  1. Your name, and that of your organisation (or the organisation that will receive funds on your behalf)

Kyerewaa Boateng

West African Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens (WACCBIP), University of Ghana.

  1. Name of the event. Make another post with another event name if you have another event.

OSH ENGAGE

  1. Email address by which you may be contacted.

kaboateng99@gmail.com

  1. What open science hardware tool(s) will be the focus of your event?

  2. Foldscope microscope

  3. Epidemiology Modeling Software (EMOD)

  4. Describe your course or workshop, whom and what it is for, where and when it will be held, how many attendees (IRL or virtual) you expect.

Two days Open Science Hardware (OSH) workshop will be organised to engage high school students in under-resourced communities of the Volta region of Ghana on how Open Science Hardware can be used to diagnose infectious diseases like malaria and COVID-19 About 200 Students will be introduced to open-source diagnostic tools like foldscope microscopes that can be used to detect infectious diseases and samples. They will also be introduced to a malaria diagnostic kit called the Malaria LAMP (Loop-Mediated Isothermal Amplification) kit which employs isothermal amplification to find the presence of malaria parasites in blood samples. It is a portable diagnostic device that is inexpensive, simple to use and locally manufactured. These practical sessions will expose students to basic experimentation techniques such as microscopy and testing for malaria and COVID-19 using LAMP assays for the diagnosis of infectious diseases. Students will be put in smaller groups to participate in these basic experiments.

This event will be facilitated by a team of research fellows who are under the Centre’s Wellcome Trust Developing Excellence in Leadership, Training and Science (DELTAS) Africa initiative programme. Facilitators will give short presentations to students about their work and research in the area of infectious diseases and topics such as the ethics of vaccine distribution and the role of open science in global health. Students may gain a more comprehensive understanding of challenges and opportunities in these fields.

  1. 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.

This will be an annual programme and engagement activity

  1. What event outputs (e.g. teaching materials, curricula, software, etc.) will you make available? Will these outputs carry an open licence?

The engagement sessions will be documented and videos will be created

  1. What will you use the grant for, roughly?

Stationary

Snacks for Kids

Stipend for facilitators

Travel cost

  1. Provide links (references) to documentation or reviews of similar
    events o

https://twitter.com/WACCBIP_UG/status/1019329135099957248

https://twitter.com/WACCBIP_UG/status/1125439670974914562

https://twitter.com/WACCBIP_UG/status/1125792571970727936

https://twitter.com/WACCBIP_UG/status/1125792579818332161

https://twitter.com/WACCBIP_UG/status/1191399319187918848

  1. Name: Ohai Blessing
    Name of Organisation: The Nigerian Society of Engineers Student Branch (NSE-SB) Faculty of Engineering, University of Nigeria (Nsukka).

  2. Name Of event: MakerWare Design Programme

  3. Email address: nsestudentbranchunn@gmail.com

  4. What open science hardware tool(s) will be the focus of your event?
    Arduino UNO kits
    ESP 32/8266 kits
    Actuators
    Sensors
    Electrical/Electronic components
    Internet Bundle

  5. Describe your course or workshop, whom and what it is for, where and when it will be held, and how many attendees (IRL or virtual) you expect.
    The “MakerWare Design Programme” is an embedded system design training that is part of our Professional Development Programme and held every semester to teach novices/beginners how to design and implement embedded/electronic systems using open-source tools. The training will be held at the Faculty of Engineering – University of Nigeria, Nsukka, from the 15th - 27th of May, 2023. It would be a physical program and about 200 persons are expected to be in attendance consequent to past programmes. The programme is scheduled to hold 3-hours per day for three times a week over the course of two weeks.

  6. 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.
    Yes, we have made plans to host a “3D CAD printing” programme after the “MakerWare Design Programme” during which students will learn how to design and prototype 3D models, and again employ all that they will learn from the 2-weeks “MakerWare Design Programme” and prototype an idea/product. Also, we would hold subsequent meetups for follow up as we are a tech community.

  7. What event outputs (e.g. teaching materials, curricula, software, etc.) will you make available? Will these outputs carry an open license?
    We would use open-source tools for the design and implementation sessions in this programme and our curriculum and teaching materials would be documented and made available via GitHub too.

  8. What you will use the grant for, roughly.
    Based on inflation adjusted estimations -
    $320 - for Purchasing the equipment and components for the programme
    $180 - for Logistics and Technical Support

  9. Provide links (references) to documentation or reviews of similar events or works you have executed. School coursework or projects can be listed, even social media posts. Anything to give a sense of what you’re about and your ability to successfully conduct this
    course or workshop. To keep this short, just the links and their descriptions will do.

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Just a note for everyone using the forums, you should be able to click on your original posts and make whatever edits or updates you need.

There is a record of when those edits were made and it will publicly show that you edited something. So maybe you don’t do that after the deadline, or if you have to just make a note about what got changed in what you submitted :slight_smile:

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Thank you all for participating in the review process, and for putting up with the administrative delay.

There were 24 microgrant applicants, with 20 participating in the review process. As there were 20 microgrants, all who participated in the review process will be awarded a USD500 microgrant, pending due diligence.

Here is the list of the 20 awardees, ranked with the most favourably reviewed at the top. You’ll be hearing from us, and please keep us posted!

  1. Digital Naturalism - Jungle Tech Workshop Series
  2. Hands-on workshop: Synthetic Biology application on plastic waste degradation
  3. Daykomb
  4. Soil Microscopy Workshop and bio-VJ Night
  5. Neuro4all
  6. MakerWare Design Programme
  7. Taller de termocicladores abiertos para educación universitaria.
  8. Environmental Science with micro:bit
  9. Jimbaran Fishing Communities Looking Closer with Foldscope
  10. Digital electronics for High School students of GBHS Pintchoumba
  11. Africa OSH Open Hardware Workshop
  12. Learning OSH through assembling
  13. Diving into open hardware data logging for small wind turbines
  14. OpenLAB - ESP8266-based Smart Irrigation system
  15. Introduction to Arduino kits in a scientific context
  16. Build a DIY ROV (Remote Operated Vehicle) Robot KIT for Under water Education
  17. RoboKids Boot Camp
  18. Owl Prowl by Wild Lives
  19. Open Hardware Meetup
  20. Africa Community forum for Open Science Hardware growth

The ordering of this list reflects the kind of short course or workshop that the community is interested in, and this will help us to more appropriately direct our focus in future calls.

Please do update us on the outcome of your event here on the forum! We aim to make this sort of microgrant call a regular thing, and your event updates will help in the review process when you apply in the next call.

Finally, thank you all for the optional comments that you provided during the review. One salient point was that it was hard to distinguish between science and general STEM events. This was reflected in the bimodal scores received by some applications. We’ll do some reflecting in this regard.

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oh wow! fantastic!

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Thank you! Great news!

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Great news!

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Fantastic ! Thank you

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Great to hear!

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This is a great news for the day

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Great news! Thank you!

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Excellent!
Thanks for the update.

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Lovley :smiley: Thanks for the possibility!

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