Welcome GOSHers!

Hello again!

My name is Gina Leite, I am based in Salvador (Brazil) and I am part of two teams. I collaborate with Wildlife Conservation Society and I am also part of Rede InfoAmazonia. At WCS I am part of Amazon Waters Initiative team and I am researching 1/ participatory monitoring initiatives in the Amazon Basin and 2/ water monitoring solutions that could be used in the Amazon using a citizen science approach.

I am looking forward to learn about what everyone is doing and share the experience I am building about participatory science in the Amazon. In 2016 I participated in the Public Lab Barnraising, met Public Lab organizers and an amazing group of people and it had a very positive impact in my life.

See you soon!

Gina Leite

Hello!

My name is Leonardo Sehn, and I am a collaborator at the Center for Academic Technology (CTA) from Porto Alegre, Brazil. I would define us as a group/laboratory/community/center of people who develop free/libre open source technology and who are interested in promoting an emancipation culture, being the technology and scientific emancipation as a departure point. From that perspective, we develop free open source hardware (FOSH) projects which we believe help the community in different areas of knowledge (like environment, health, education, energy), we develop FOSH machines to fabricate other FOSH and promote events (like e-HAL, the first Brazilian free and open source hardware meeting) and discussions to empower people with knowledge about the tools and projects from CTA and to mature and spread the comprehension about different paradigms related to emancipation and technology.

I, my self, am very interested in FOSH and citizen science and the synergy between these two concepts. I try to understand how to make those methodologies reach their practical objectives, that is, to help people, benefit people, empower them and bring them to a perspective of collaborators and developers. I am a vegan gaĆŗcho Physics Engineer and I am in a master program in remote sensing in the area of environment disaster. My project is to promote citizen meteorologic monitoring through the development of a modular meteorologic station that is accessible, well documented, open and free. And also through methodologies of engaging actors in the project. And I think music and art are important allies in our mission. For a beginning, I think it is ok.

Thank you very much.
Great hug to each one that appreciates and a lovely greeting to everyone,
Leonardo

Hi all!

Iā€™m Paz Bernaldo, and I might well be the least experienced/knowledgeable person in this entire group, experienced in open hardware related stuff :)ā€¦ Feeling more than a bit intimidated -will compensate with enthusiasm.

I call myself a development practitioner/entrepreneur and now also a researcher (a nano version). My background is in socioeconomic local development. Iā€™m working on a prototype project that aims to create empowerment and fight segregation in vulnerable neighborhoods surrounding an urban hill in Melipilla city. The way we want to do this is by training a small group of neighbors (15 to 20) in digital skills required to solve a locally defined and refined problem(s) (following the PDIA approach), one that directly touches their daily life.

Our main assumption is that in order to fight inequality and segregation is this physical space we need to tackle the digital layer of these phenomena in a very practical way, one that obviously relates to the physical layer. And here is where hardware and citizen science -and not only software- become super relevant. For instance, if the selected group of citizens was to define ā€˜accessā€™ as one important problem, options could be getting training in the fabrication and use of balloon/kite mapping to register the territory, put the community on digital maps, identify conflict points, good access routes to the hill and neighborhoods, or map every single home/business (maybe creating content in Open Street Map)?

Iā€™m really looking forward to GOSH, and to meeting everyone.

Salud!!
Paz

You might be pleasantly surprised by how little we all know. But, to quote James Thurber, I like to think that I am ā€œmostly like a naive burgundy, but you will be amused by (my) presumptuousness.ā€ So yeah, enthusiasm will do just fine. Welcome.

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Hi Everyone,

Very excited to be in Chile for this event! Reading everyoneā€™s introā€™s I can already tell a weekā€™s not gonna feel long enough.

Iā€™m an artist in Baltimore, MD USA where I currently work as a lab manager at the Baltimore Underground Science Space (BUGSS) a community synbio lab. I actually kind of stumbled into this world of DIY science hardware through my personal research into hormones - I am a non-binary queer person, pronouns they/them/theirs. Started spending time at BUGSS to learn molecular biology and synthetic biology techniques as I was interested in creating an open source bioproduction method for sex hormones. Became excited by plant bioproduction, and the potential of this ā€“ as opposed to mammalian and microbial cell bioproduction ā€“ to lower drug production costs. Also became very interested in the idea of a ā€œbiocommonsā€ as I learned more about the history of drug patents. Thus a project called, Open Source Gendercodes (OSG) was born. Currently I am working on producing a series of plasmids that can be used for plant transformation that contain plant-optimized genes for enzymes necessary for human sex hormone production. Once produced I plan to distribute the plasmids to anyone interested in running experiments and contributing results to OSG. I am also working on a web platform that will facilitate collaboration between labs and biohackers who would like to contribute to OSG.

See you all in Chile!
Ryan Graciela Hammond

Hi, my name is Stacey, Iā€™m an Assistant Professor at the School of Arts, Media, and Engineering at Arizona State University. My current projects cover DIY biology, low-cost solar cooking, interactive screenprinting, 3D printing food, and work with a thermal-sensing drone.

I head the SANDS (Social and Digital Systems) group, a transdisciplinary research collective at ASU. Our materially-oriented work draws on approaches from computer science, interaction design, humanities, and philosophy of technology. I also teach a course on Interactive Materials, and my class is participating in the Biodesign challenge this year.

I canā€™t wait to meet everyone in Chile!

HI GOSHers IĀ“m Byron Tarabata form Ecuador, we work in Scientific divulgation , focus in Open science ( also hardware and software) this is the web of my organization http://www.quintopilar.com/ ,
actually we begin whit a project of a didactic toys "Micro aventuras " for childrens the objetive of this is made a book whit different samples (insects , cells, etc ) That allows teaching principles of biology to children between 8 and 12 years.

Hello! Iā€™m Benjamin Zamora from Chile. Iā€™m a student of Computer Science in the University of Chile. In 2015 we started a Biohacking collective called Biohack VilĆŗ, in which we are developing a series of hacktivism activities, and open source projects. One of them is Vektor, a device that pretends give humans the orientation sense that birds have, this, by giving vibrations in relation to the magnetic field of the Earth. The other project is called Laberinto Biohackspace, a place where science itā€™s accessible to non-expert people to solve real local problems for their communities. Iā€™m working with SĆ©verine and OpenBio group by this year, and we are real enthusiastic of this instance of sharing experiences, knowing really great people that are interested in a very philanthropic way of doing science.

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Hello! My name is Dorn Cox, and I consider myself a farmer, agriculturalist, and physiocrat. I currently serve as the research director for the Wolfeā€™s Neck Farm Foundation, and live and work on my familyā€™s diversified organic farm in New Hampshire just North of Boston, Massachusetts. I am passionate about participatory on-farm research and sharing open source agricultural tools, software and data to accelerate innovation and quantify environmental services from regenerative agriculture. I co-founded a number of open science projects including the FarmOS software platform and the Farm Hack community and I have been active with the US Soil Health movement through the USDA and private initiatives like the Soil Health Institute and collaborative efforts like GODAN(Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition). You can see a short film about the open science collaboration at Wolfeā€™s neck here. I am excited about agriculture as a shared human endeavor where every farm has access to constantly improving global knowledge to improve local production. My PhD is from the University of New Hampshire in Natural Resources and Earth Systems Science.

Hi!
Iā€™m Joel Murphy, and I have a couple of Open Source Hardware startups
www.pulsesensor.com is an optical heart rate monitor
www.openbci.com is an EEG/EMG/ECG amplifier

I also am just starting a project to make an open source ā€˜fit bitā€™ called OpenHAK (Opensource Health Activty Kit)

And, Iā€™m part of a team that is working on a government funded project to create open-source tools for designing hearing aids

My background is in visual arts. I made kinetic sculpture in a former life. Also, I taught Physical Computing at Parsons from 2006 to 2014 and watched the open source hardware revolution erupt around me. My woefully un-updated blog is www.joelmurphy.net and you can find video of some of my sculptures there.

Super psyched to meet you all next week!

Hi all,

Great to meet you all virtually!

My name is Max Liboiron. Iā€™m one of the co-organizers for GOSH 2017. I direct Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR) (https://civiclaboratory.nl/), a grassroots, feminist, environmental monitoring marine pollution laboratory in Newfoundland, Canada.
We specialize in making no-power, DIY, citizen science tools so people in the north (northern, subarctic, arctic) can monitor their own areas for pollution rather than waiting for official or government tools. All of our tools are free and open source.

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Hi all,

Im getting more and more excited when reading all these introductions!

My name is Xiamyra (Shamira, like Shakira, but with an ā€˜mā€™ ;)).

At Waag Society, Amsterdam, the Netherlands we focus on Open, Fair and Inclusive projects. We have a Fab lab, Wet lab and Textile lab where we develop open source tools and techniques.
The Wet lab hosts the events of the Dutch DIYbio community and the [BioHack Academy] (https://biohackacademy.github.io).

Im interested in new designs, make connections and how you host an event/run your organisation.

Soo excited to see you all!

Best,
Xiamyra

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Hello all!

My name is Laura, you can find me as #laola.

Iā€™m a visual artist based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Iā€™m graduated in Fine Arts, in the specialization of painting. In 2016 I got a Masters Degree in Electronic Arts and my Tesisā€™s research was based on sci-art coproduction.
Since 2011, Iā€™ve been involved in bioart practices, or practices that involve the use of living matter, as I prefer to assume it. From 2013 up to now, I am part of PROTEUS, a sci-art collective formed with molecular biologists and social scientists. Is our attempt to communicate and show processes that occur at molecular scale and to vanish the boundaries between science and art presentations. We work in this field as a sci-art team with no hierarchies between us. We use both traditional artistic techniques as well as new technologies to reach our results.

Iā€™m excited to meet you as part of a larger community of scientists, makers, designers, hackers and artists, working together and developing open science hardware tools, as a base for empowering citizen and to push for a democratic access to technologies through open source tools.

See you soon!

Laura

Hi! Iā€™m Klie and will be the Safety Officer at GOSH. My pronouns are they/them/their.

Iā€™m from New Orleans, Louisiana, United States and am the Operations Manager for Public Lab. Iā€™m also the Communications Specialist for a local water group that focuses mostly on flood mitigation. My experience/passion is both in social and biological sciences, and the combo means that I spend a lot of time brainstorming ways to help create equitable, inclusive science spaces.

Looking forward to meeting many of you and learning about your projects soon!

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Hii Everyone, Iā€™m Akbar

I come from Indonesia but now staying in Japan to survive Ph.D. program. Iā€™m one of the member/co-founders of Lifepatch, Citizen Initiatives in Art, Science, and Technology based in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. In Japan, Iā€™m studying the molecular biology of Tomato, but sometimes also learning and working on the things related to the open source greenhouse management system.

Here is the post about GOSH conference at our page, in the Indonesian language.

Iā€™m very happy to be the part of GOSH community and looking forward to meeting all of you!

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I would like to hear more about the Dropbot. It seems to be very relevant for reseachers in life science in African context

Hi everyone,
I am Thomas Mboa from Cameroon. Currently I am based in Quebec city where I am doing a PhD in information and communication at universitƩ Laval. My interest is on the maker movement in african subsaharian countries. So it will be a pleasure for me to meet any gosher interested in development through technology in Africa or low incomes countries.

Early in 2016 I have launched FABREL, a fab devoted to OER (Open Educational Ressources). Currently, our project is to build our Prototype of the Parakou Open Access Box, which appears like the contribution of open hardware to the adoption of Open Access in african universities with lack of internet, energy, hardware. ā€¦

Finally it is just 2 days that I have been involved to be the Manager of the Scholarly Communication and Open Science office at Higher Intsitute of Medical Technology (Cameroon). My challenge is to apply GOSH principles in this institute. We are looking to create a biohackerspace and for the next monts (May) we are planning to organize a seminar on open science and healthcare. I hope that many of you will be interested by all these projects

Hello all,

I am Ellen K Foster from Troy, New York USA although I am currently based in Graz, Austria for a fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Science and Technology Studies (STS). I am a doctoral candidate at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the STS department, graduating this coming Spring. Within my studies I have an interest in public engagements of science and technology, redefining technology, and appropriation of technology for civic science actions. I have focused this interest by studying maker and hacker communities in the US, Canada, and Austria ā€“ with a particular interest in the inclusion practices of specific groups engaged in broadening technological participation through different means. This includes feminist hacker collectives, library fab labs, and fixing/repair groups.

I have also helped to set up and have run several workshops entitled E-Waste to Makerspace (EW2MS) that use e-waste to teach middle school students re-use and fabrication techniques. While setting up a playful setting toward demystifying technology and opening up the ā€˜black box,ā€™ we also explore problems of e-waste disposal and social justice oriented re-use practices for local civic science actions and community engagement. (Pardon the website design, it is under construction!)

I am very excited to be taking part in GOSH to hone some of my own fabrication skills and think through complex problems of open source hardware. I would also love to talk even further about maintenance, repair, and thinking critically about technological participation and production.

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Iā€™ll be bringing one to Santiago so Iā€™d be happy to demo it for you!

Hi yā€™all! I am an environmental scientist working on citizen science projects (among others). I am very excited to be here and to learn from you all. My interests are on instruments that can help citizen science. In our CS projects, we are interested in water quality but also in indoor environmental quality. We also pursue representation of geospatial data to inform citizens and any help in this sense too is welcome! Thanks GOSH for the opportunity to be a member of this community. I am originally from Spain, but coming from the University of Texas at Austin, TX, USA. See you all in a couple of days!