Biology is just a wonderfully exciting domain of science!
Regretfully
the general public often perceives it as a topic that is extremely
complicated, incomprehensible, demands high expertise and in addition is
simply scary. “Genetic material”, “cloning” and “genetically modified
organisms” are terms that often bring up fear and public debate. Thus
far the scientific community has not been terribly successful in
fighting this false image.
Biology is part of our daily lives; it is “the stuff of life”!
If
the general public was more familiar with the concepts of biology and
biotechnology, the fear factor would be erased and people would be able
to profit more from science in everyday life. The entry level to
understand biological concepts is often out of reach for
non-specialists; with help and encouragement from experienced mentors in
the fields of Biology and Biotechnology we can eliminate this barrier.
I believe that the best way to learn is to get hands-on experience – that’s why I am passionate about DIY biology
movement. Community labs offering place to play around with DNA or
microorganisms in a non-official setting have multiplied in the past
decade.
I contributed to this movement in my hometown – Warsaw.
I held a series of workshops where everyone could take a shot at extracting their own DNA. I also found a fantastic, supportive community in the Warsaw Hackerspace, where we built lab equipment
(centrifuge from old hard drive; cheap thermocycler) and had countless
planned or completely spontaneous seminars and workshops on the topic of
genetics.
I had a chance to visit similar community bio-labs in Switzerland (Hackarium), France (LaPaillasse), Spain (Bio-hacklab Barcelona), Japan (BioClub) and the USA (ATX Hackerspace, Austin). In each of those places I have met people with the same level of enthusiasm and eagerness to learn new stuff.
It has been an amazing collaborative experience for me and I plan to continue contributing to this community.
Science Popularization
I BELIEVE THAT BIO-HACKLABS CAN GREATLY INCREASE INTEREST IN SCIENCE AND SCIENCE LITERACY IN YOUR LOCAL COMMUNITY…
To advertise this I prepared a small intro to DIY-biology for evolutionary biologists for the ESEB2019 Congress in Turku. E-poster available here.