20180725 Board Meeting

Agenda of the Board Meeting

Date: Wednesday, July 25th, 18.30-19.30pm
Place: UniverCité, 3rd floor meeting room (MC)

Everyone is again invited to this Board Meeting, as these are such exciting times!

Chair

• Rachel

Hello

(Rachel, 1 min)

Public minutes

(Rachel, 1 min)

Get ok from all board members to upload minutes on wiki (or else discuss alternative below)
Objections? none

Who can keep the time?

• NAME

Items

Point1: LemanMake 2018:

(Luc, 5min)

This will be a really fun event, the weekend of 29/30sept in Renens centre!
As far as is known, there will be three tables:

• Hackuarium
• Spectro (LucP)
• BeeMoS (Olivier)

Luc asks: How about Octanis?

We have written the organisers to tell them there can be a Hackuarium workshop each day (20 participants x2) to make o-Foldscopes, the 'oldschool' version of the Foldscope we have used in previous workshops. Michael Jaussi confirms that it will be good, and says we should wait for the web page updates to advertise these as a special event too (i.e. in fb). They will have a system in place to sign people up and buy tickets. What should we charge? (15chf?)

We need to provide promotional material at our Hackuarium table.

• flyers ** to make
• stickers .** we have
• totebags (will count how many are left over from crowdfunding, and we should probably sell them for some limited price... ok?)
• computer on the table to sign up to the newsletter, and maybe for a future run of T-shirts, if we can't make some soon.
  

Who can take care of looking into possibilities for t-shirts?
Can someone (Vanessa?) put together a cool flyer?

Should we allocate a budget? (for the foldscopes, it was already approved, maybe for t-shirts!) Or do we have enough of everything?

Point 2: Visit for inspection of the P1 laboratory

(Rachel, 10min)
After almost a year with an 'official' P1 lab, and not so many real cloning experiments, we recently got a note from Olivier Gianina, chef de projet, Direction Générale de l’Environnement (DGE). Ursula Jenal, a biosafety consultant with the mandate to control biosafety labs, will come visit Hackuarium on the morning of 4sept2018 to inspect our P1 lab.
We may learn more soon, but in the meantime, the lab needs to be more than just tidied.
Some broken things, like the temperature gauge of the autoclave, which Gustavo plans to make digital already, need to be fixed; while others, like the crazy shaker, should be put out to pasture.
Some decisions about our SOP also should be revisited. (waste disposal for instance)
We simply have to ask everyone to make sure they do their bit, for instance labelling their work and cultures, tidying after themselves, and not just letting things rot...
Certainly the frig and freezers will be sorted out more soon!
Anyone is welcome to come and help, as general cleaning and tidying will also be good, and 'many hands make light work' !
Thanks in advance!

Point 3: Relationship with Inartis

(Gustavo, 10min)
Juliette came by last Friday, 20 July, to tell us that she was tired of losing money every month and that the Swiss Motion (prosthetic group) would be moving into Hackuarium. Thus, we needed to make plans for another move.
After last month's discussion, this was a bit of a surprise...
We hope we convinced her that our lab is not the place for that group (which has no need for water and already uses some of our equipment), and asked what we would need to pay as rent to sort the whole thing out. Sam made a striking call, asking for the amount owed each month, that she says she pays for our space etc (about 2400chf, said Juliette), and said we can do it together...
Juliette promised to provide two possible options for us to rent and/or move by this Monday, 23July.
As of 19h 24july, we still have no proposition to discuss.
For now, we expect to wait and see...
We also will continue to work on plans toward a more sustainable Hackuarium...
Sam might have some words to add in that regard...
Juliette also said she would come to the meeting tonight, so perhaps she can tell us more now.

Point 4: GOSH2018

(Rachel, 5min)

I am now promised a travel stipend of 750USD for the travel to Shenzhen next October for GOSH2018. This can only cover visa and travel costs, not accommodation.
However, Sam, who registered as an Octanis member, was not so lucky...
Can Hackuarium provide support for accommodation for Rachel and in general for Sam?? (when RA first looked, the round trip flight was about 1000 chf...)

Point 4b: Minigrant Proposal

Sam: I would like to request a minigrant from the board of 850 CHF to pay for flight costs to present and discuss my work and engagement in the open communities I am involved in at GOSH 2018. While I was accepted to the conference after application, I did not receive a travel stipend. I have tried to contact different EPFL positions, asking for help, but have not had any success. I do not have the means to pay for the trip myself and to be honest, I don't feel comfortable requesting this minigrant to do so either. I put this here to have as I would like a discussion.

Point 5: New Interns

(Rachel 2min)

Two interns, Ismaël and Lucie, are working on the spectro project with Luc P.
Thanks to our friend Matthieu at Micropat (in our old 1st floor lab space), we have a pH electrode that works for their experiments.

Three new interns from the epfl, Violaine, Jennifer, and Vithooban (Vithoo), are working on genomic integrity projects and more at the lab over the next 8 weeks. Some of you already know Violane (for instance, from the microfluidics workshop).
As their first experiment today, they confirmed (also with me) the bioluminescence of two V. fischerii cultures brought to the lab by the Nyon students, who want to make a bioluminescent mosaic for their travail de maturité .
If we are very lucky, a prototype of the cheek cell chip may be developed before this team of three talented epfl students are finished in the end of september!
Please make them welcome!

Point 6: Future Events

for 26sept18, a special presentation on DNA damage detection, by Delphine Plaire is proposed. Ok for all?
any other events??

Point 7: Other Business

1) Should Hackuarium register in this Citizen Science network, to help perhaps for funding possibilities, and maybe even a better world?

2) Round two of the urban garden project has begun, with cells already germinating on paper towels and inoculations planned for today!

3) Luc is leaving the board in August, and Masoud is ready to take on the responsibilities as Treasurer. Olivier is officially designated as the 'shadow secretary' right now.

Is everyone happy with this? Any other people want to join the board??
other items?