Main Page

Welcome to the wiki of Hackuarium community.

At Hackuarium, we want to bring biology (and biologists) to the world, and the real world back to biology. Our laboratory is an excuse to meet and discuss, build and develop ideas in a neutral, open, noncompetitive and not-for-profit environment.

Cliquez ici pour accéder à la version française de ce wiki.

This page was launched during our 1st Ever Hackuarium Wiki Sprint that took place on 7 December 2014. As you might notice quickly, it is a work-in-progress.

Scroll down and find out what this is all about!

DIY Bio

What is DIYbio?

DIYbio (Do-It-Yourself biology) is a movement that wants to free the practice of biological research and innovation from the institutional and industrial laboratories. Pursued both by amateurs and professional biologists, DIYbio is developing low-cost and low-tech solutions to problems identified by the community.

The movement is characterised by an extremely diverse set of practices and participants. Some call themselves 'biohackers', in reference to the hacker culture.

DIYbio.org and DIYbio.eu are the portals of the international and european communities, respectively.

For more information, visit the Wikipedia page dedicated to DIYbio.

Hackuarium

Hackuarium is a not-for-profit association aiming at democratizing science through public engagement.

Our laboratory in Renens (Switzerland) is open to anyone sharing the values of the association and who is dedicated to follow the DIYbio Europe ethical guidelines.

Our projects are initiated and carried out by scientists as well as non-scientists from a variety of background. They are passionate about tinkering with biology in particular, and technology in general. Some are engineers, architects, designers, IT and computer scientists or retired professionals, but others have no scientific education. They are mostly citizens interested in open and participatory research and innovation, outside the contrains of traditional institutions.

Hackuarium members want to investigate new ways of carrying out interdisciplinary research and innovation, by making their results accessible (low-cost), simple and easily reproducible (low-tech) and by promoting an open source philosophy.

Hackuarium is proudly using infrastructures provided by UniverCité, an unconventional innovation hub opened in May 2014. Our equipment is mostly upcycled material from institutions and industries from western Switzerland.

Who we are

Renens is a hopping hub - and our members reflect the diversity that is in and around Lausanne/Renens.
Check us out, and find out what makes Hackuarium a good mix.

Committee

The current committee is composed of the following people:

• President & Treasurer: Luc Henry
• Secretary: Michal Masternak
• Lab Manager: Yann Pierson
• Information technology & Infrastructure: Sam Sulaimanov
• Art and Design coordinator: Vanessa Lorenzo
• Talent scout and evangelist: Gianpaolo Rando
• Events and coordinator: Anne-Laure Pittet
• Member: Ana Roldan

The Agenda of the last board meeting can be found here.

Members and Membership

Hackuarium operates on a membership basis at this current time.

The monthly membership fee is 20 CHF. It gives 24/7 access to the lab.

Please ask a member of the board if you want to join as a member.

All events are open to anyone, including non-members.

Friends of Hackuarium

Spaces:

UniverCité

La Paillasse, Paris

Paillasse Saône, Lyon

Projects:

Exodes Urbains

EchOpen

Where we are

Hackuarium is one of the association active at UniverCité, an innovation space under construction since May 2014 in the IRL building in Renens. We have documented our working environment as it has evolved.
As of December 2015, UniverCité regroups a laboratory, a workshop and co-working space.

Events

OpenHackuarium: Every Wednesday, 19:00-22:00

Our lab and space are open to the public. Please come and have a chat! And if you have any questions get in touch!

Upcoming Hackuarium Events

2016.12.14 Wednesday 19:30-20:30: General Assembly of Hackuarium association. Followed by a fondue! All members welcome to talk about 2017!

2016.11.28 Thursday 19:30-20:30: Board meeting

2016.11.02 Wednesday 19:30-22:00: Openhackuarium vol. 122 Epidemium and Echopen: when Open Source meets Pharma and Medtech

2016.10.24 Thursday 19:30-20:30: Board meeting

2016.10.01 Saturday 11:30-18:30: Balloon Launch and BBQ Octanis will launch their second stratospheric balloon, so why not celebrate?

2016.09.21 Wednesday 19:30-22:00: Openhackuarium vol. 116 Hackuarium for dummies (and life science students) + Update on the bioreactor project

2016.09.19 Thursday 19:30-20:30: Board meeting

2016.09.10 Saturday 9:30-18:30: Raspberry Pi Workshop: come test and build with the latest open source computer technology

2016.09.14 Wednesday 19:30-22:00: Openhackuarium vol. 115 IntelliGene: EPFL iGEM team wants to build tools for easy synthetic genetic circuit generation

2016.09.07 Wednesday 19:30-22:00: Openhackuarium vol. 114 Thymio: an open source educational robot

2016.08.31 Wednesday 19:30-22:00: Openhackuarium vol. 113 Fuels from plastics: a DIY approach to recycling

2016.08.24 Wednesday 19:30-22:00: Openhackuarium vol. 112 SimplicityBio, Open mic to community projects

Other Upcoming Events at UniverCité

2016.11.25-27 Friday-Sunday 9:30-18:30: Science Hackathon 2016 The first ever Science Hackathon at UniverCité: let's hack research!

Other Upcoming Events

2016.11.19-29 Saturday-Sunday Lauzhack at EPFL is organised by CLIC, the Computer & Communication Sciences students' association

Past Hackuarium Events

You can find the complete list of our past events here.

Projects

Here, you will find the projects going on in the Hackuarium.

Active Projects

• Hacktion challenges
• The P1 project
• BeerDeCoded
• Living Instruments
• Protein purification systems
• BIO-DESIGN for the REAL WORLD
• Micro to Macro Water Pollution - with Hammerdirt and BIO-DESIGN for the REAL WORLD
• Spectro-pointer
• Darty_Monkeys
• Octanis - with more information about their Rover / Balloon here
• Grow&Mix_Bioink
• unmapping
• AGiR! for genomic integrity
• Open Source Bioreactor

Archived Projects

• Open-Food-DNA
• Bience (Beer and Science!)
• Mycelium Structures
• Live Type
• LivingLab Design
• Bioluminescence
• Quantitative Anthropology
• Impression 3D
• Projects:Dépollution des stands de tirs Suisses
• Incubateur bon marché
• Space Seed
• Reception d'images satellites
• Edible wall
• ZéBU CH
• Compost Bacteria

Practical Informations

Following this link you will find a general plan of Hackuarium.
Following this link, you will find the plan of Hackuarium with the position of equipment.

Rules at Hackuarium

This page describe the code of conduct for Hackuarium members.

Protocols

All the protocols that we use at Hackuarium can be found here They are detailed and structured so that the main focus is on applications. The idea is to give crucial information on how to apply the most common techniques of the Biology toolbox. The protocols are structured as follow:

A scheme describing each

A brief description of the protocol and its use

A description of the different ways of carrying out the protocol. Ideally there should be a description of a commercial kit and a DIY kit.

A description of the safety issues and best practice

Information specific to Hackuarium and where to find the components, tools and reagents.

Instruments available

This page describes all the instruments available at Hackuarium (work in progress..), their location and how to use them.

Up-to-date list of instruments we still need

This on-line document contains all the instruments and tools we need. If you happen to have a piece of equipment we are (or may be) looking for, contact us!

Where we shop

Wetware

Consumables can be purchased from Huber Lab.

Swiss-based Smiples has a very extensive listing of second hand laboratory and technical items. These can be bought from their online shop or from Ricardo.

Hardware

Options for electronic parts

• Ebay (international)
• AliExpress (China)
• Adafruit (UK)
• Seeedstudio (China)
• Tmart (Hong Kong)
• Rasberry pi shop (Switzerland)
• Distrilec (Switzerland)

How to built a new project page on our Wiki

If you want to start or edit a project page on Hackuarium's wiki, please follow these instructions.

Library and ReadingList

The DIY biology / Biohacking movement

Biohackers. The politics of open science by Alessandro Delfanti (2013) London: Pluto Press.

A review by Luc Henry

DIY-Bio – economic, epistemological and ethical implications and ambivalences by Jozef Keulartz and Henk van den Belt (2016) Life Sciences, Society and Policy

Biohacking everything you need to know about diy biology, (Accessed 05.2016)

Genspace gets funding, PRNewswire, (Accessed 05.2016)

Learn from DIY biologists, Todd Kuiken, Nature, (Accessed 05.2016)

Open Hardware

Open-hardware, pioneers push for low-cost lab kitElizabeth Gibney, Nature, (Accessed 05.2016)

Appropedia a source of DIY instruments builds, Dr. Joshua Pearce, (Accessed 05.2016)

The PCB milling machine, Open Hardware Repository, (Accessed 05.2016)

More

http://www.creativeapplications.net/processing/sensortape-3d-aware-dense-sensor-network-on-a-tape/, Sensory network on a roll of tape, Filip Visnjic, (Accessed 05.2016)

RedEye Oxygen Sensing Patches, Ocean Optics, (Accessed 05.2016)

Art

Rainbow wasp nests, Mattia Menchetti, (Accessed 05.2016)

Dirty beats making music with bacteria, Interspecifics(Accessed 05.2016)

More1, More2, More3

Ideas/Concepts/Science

The new tree of life TED (Accessed 05.2016)

Rethinking work, Yann Heurtaux, (Accessed 05.2016)

That plastic bottle cutter, Pavel & Ian, (Accessed 05.2016)

Open Source

Results held hostage, Francesco Mondada, (Accessed 05.2016)

Media and Press

• Newsletter

Wanted

Do you want to contribute to making Hackuarium a diverse and lively community? Check out our wanted lists:

Skills

Ideas

Equipment

Consumables