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Massive congratulations to Tata Gloria Berinyuy, who has collaborated with the CRISPR Dx team at OBL during her internship at Mboalab in Cameroon, for winning the Cameroon Falling Walls Lab Competition 2023 with a ticket to represent Cameroon in Berlin from November 7-9! Gloria presented her work on CRISPR diagnostics for neonatal and maternal infections ... Read more ..read more

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Huge congratulations to Harry Akligoh on successfully defending his MPhil thesis on “Local Manufacturing of Enzymes For The Multiplex Diagnosis of Candidiasis and STIs”. Harry has been a core member of the Open Bioeconomy Lab since 2019, establishing our Ghana node at Kumasi Hive and undertaking graduate research in the Department of Molecular Medicine at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi under the supervision of Dr Samuel Sakyi and with Dr Jenny Molloy acting as a remote co-supervisor. He demonstrated the successful application of locally manufactured OpenVent from ..read more

OBL members Jenny Molloy, Aish and Ana Pascual Garrigos contributed to a hands-on biology session on “Detecting DNA 101” at Cambridge Makespace on 22 Nov 2021 which introduced techniques for detecting DNA and ways in which people have been working to make them more accessible.  Around 20 people joined in person and 30 joined online to listen to a lecture on different ways to detect DNA, drawing inspiration from the explosion of innovation in COVID testing since 2020. We showcased hands-on hacks and makes that are driving down the cost of molecular biology though open source and low-cost h ..read more

Sebastian Abby Pratama graduated today with an MPhil in Biotechnology from the University of Cambridge. Sebastian completed his MPhil individual research project in the Open Bioeconomy Lab where he investigated scaling up optogenetic control of recombinant protein expression. This work led to a model for the transmission of light through Eschcerichia coli cultures in cyclindrical bioreactors and characterisation using a blue-light activated promoter expressing the mCherry reporter. We celebrated with a drink at the historic Eagle pub in Cambridge where Watson and Crick announced the discovery ..read more

Dr Jenny Molloy was interviewed by the World Economic Forum Strategic Intelligence Unit about the future of the global bioeconomy and specifically a question that drives our research at the Open Bioeconomy Lab: How can technological advancements in synthetic biology benefit everyone? The full piece can be found here and the interview section is below. What drew you to explore and work in synthetic biology? Originally, I worked on advocacy for open data and open science (which fortunately is now much more mainstream within research culture), and then my introduction specifically to bioeconomy p ..read more

Harry Akligoh has been a member of the OBL Ghana Node since 2018 and as he finished his MPhil and moves on to pastures new we asked him to reflect on his career journey to date and his plans for the future. Knowing me, knowing you; How I got involved with Open Bioeconomy Lab In April, 2018, I travelled to Kumasi to participate in the Africa Open Science and Hardware summit (Africa OSH). During the conference, I gave a presentation titled “Role of Citizen Science in Helping Overcome Africa’s Infectious Disease Burden”. In this presentation, I highlighted challenges of reagent and equipment inac ..read more

A new report on how international organizations and governments can increase their innovation capacity towards the SDGs by adopting and promoting open hardware was co-edited by Open Bioeconomy Lab member Dr Jenny Molloy in collaboration with the Gathering for Open Science Hardware (GOSH). The resulting policy brief highlighted the following key messages: 1. International organizations and governments can increase their innovation capacity towards the SDGs by adopting and promoting open hardware. 2. Open hardware can build innovation capacity in countries with low investments in science, techno ..read more

A new report on opportunities and challenges for  the adoption of open hardware by technology transfer offices (TTOs) was co-authored by Open Bioeconomy Lab member Dr Jenny Molloy in collaboration with the Gathering for Open Science Hardware (GOSH). Dr Molloy organized an online workshop with GOSH members in April 2021 to explore how TTOs and Open Science Hardware practitioners can collaborate. Gathering 15 participants from both backgrounds, the discussion aimed to identify the critical challenges and opportunities of this process. You can read a report from the workshop here. The result ..read more