path: root/transcripts/fbi-diybio-2012/madlab.mdwn

http://madlab.org.uk/

I'm Rachel, and this is Acer and we're from MADlab or DIYbio in Manchester in the UK. We run diybio-mcr, but we run it in the context of madlab. I just want to talk about this and then Ace is going to take over and talk about diybio-mcr. This is our space, we have a 3k sq ft in city center ni Manchester. We started up in 2009 and took over the space, and we have a generous landlord and a long lease. It's over 3 floors, it's from the industrial revolution, it has conditions of the working class man.

It's a community working space for biology, technology and art. It's a bit more curated. That's come about because we don't have a membership model. Madlab or Manchester is much different than SF where you have people less well off, we didn't think membership would work. Last year we had 10k through our doors, and 30k since 2009. We invite as many people as possible to participate.

We had kids from 7 to 10, we have people in the 70s and 80s, we have 60/40 male/female ratio, and also a gay/lesbian turnout as well. In terms of how we operate, we have a lot of groups that meet up at the space, we've had 44 from this month, from anything for arts/crafts, food hacking, open data, and this- sorry, we have some pictures. These are the directors, here's Mitch Altman who you might have met last night, he held a hacking event last night, and he has the different range of ages for people we have at our event.

Basically, one of the ways we make money is through running costs, the drum that some of our hackers made, that does a song every time you mention it online. Here's the .. in action. We have professional development training courses, or not so professional as it may be. It helps support the work that we do for DIYbio. We've got really good links iwth the local council, the digital development agency, and they have been a good advocate.. this is the head of manchester's city council at our christmas policy making the most of it. So on that note, I'll leave this to Ace.

diybio-mcr is one of our projects. We have long-running workshops. One of those is diybiomcr, it was originally as a joint project with Manchester Metropolitan University, we were happy to receive funding from the Wellcome Trust, they are absolutely fantastic. That funded us for about a year, we wanted to bootstrap the group and now we're carrying this folder. We have new people and new partners, it's really fun. We're at the start of a DIYbio project in Manchester.

So what do we do? We do meetups of course. We do monthly meetups as well as workshops. The groups are typically- we've been concentrating on building the audience, we haven't been doing anything technologically advanced. We want emphasis on fun things that can bring people in and get them enthused about diybio, get as many people into it as possible, then we can start getting more sophisticated or something. The regulatory stuff here is a little different, so there's only so far that we can take into that about forms and stuff.

We've done the classic tiki-style DNA extraction, the roman pineapple base DNA extraction. It's a lot of fun. The other ingredient obviously being a dishwasher powder or salt or something, so we call it tiki-cell DNA extraction and we still drink it anyway. You have to grease the pineapple, you don't eat the jerky.

So, we do some other projects. We have Manchester Microbe Night, we have samples from bus stops and stuff, and we culture those for a few days and took pictures of the plates and post them on Google Maps, it's fun and it introduces people to these techniques. 

This is the famous snail. He's with me. We're trying to do some mendelian thing, so we're trying to get different shapes of shells.

This is our PCR machine. We have a strong electronics group that meets up every few days. They have been great at getting electronics projects going from MADlab. This is based on Russell Durrett's lightbulb pcr project.

We ran a session on microbial fuel cells. This was yeast, checking activity of their yeast, or packet yeast. I went to the brewery because their yeast was sluggish. Then we were making soil-based fue cells, really really simple, just digging up some mud and building a fuel cell. We call that bio-terrorwatt.

Brian Degger has been doing a dismemberment for octopuses. We ate it afterwards as well. So, back in October we had the first ever UK DIYbio Summit. We brought over some people, we got Brian Degger, Cathal Garvey came over, and tons of other people came over and we did some DIYbio.

We also do Microbiology & Art exhibitions. We've got quite a lot of press now, because we're quiet about how we're facing, we're not qu... kinda talking about our relationship with the press, the best thing to say is that, .. the 504.. the documentary about biosecurity, fuel cells, were.. but, yeah, you know, the take home in all that was that, what we were doing specifically wasn't coming across necessarily as the correct way. The overall feel is that it is quite positive. Eventually what we found is that for places where they needed fact checking harder, you get members of the community diving into the conversation, so you can find people that will bat for you. We've had a positive experience with the gymnists (germans?). So the bootstrapping stage, that's just- um, but with still, it's still DIYbio as a core part of what MADlab is doing, we still have a good working relationship with Wellcome Trust. We have projects with some universities too. We have a biosensor project called Catalyst, it's like catalystproject.org or something. We also do work with Lancaster University. A place north of Manchester.. deal with hard-to-reach communities, and we've co-designing biosensors with the university and ourselves. We're looking into building a basic ATP detection kit, and running through low cost reliability stuff, it's going to be interesting, and how you want to .. workshop with those guys in the UK, so about 7am I am going to be dialing in on skype.

We have some meetups on skype, so if you see here it's Rob Dylan on twitter, he's a member of the life sciences department at Lancaster University. It's a really interesting eprson, he's doing a fly session for us. There was an event yesterday called New Bio in Newcastle, we were hoping to be part of that, but he was over there anyway, for a mechanism to feed sunflies. We have Rob Dylan involved and a few other people.

We are looking at doing a community lab. That seems to be.. we borrowed the name from Genspace, we've been calling it a community lab. We've got 3k sq ft, we're currently in discussions with the City next door to Manchester, about 10min talk away, about taking a second space, and wading through UK regulations, and that will all be happening in the not too distant future.

How are you getting funding? The base funding of MADlab is funded by the university program. We do venue.. what? We do few things like workshops, then we do specific projects. The Lancaster University projects are funded, there's- the day to day is funded by that activity, then all the other things. Are those grants or contracts? A mix of both.