[DIYbio] Re: Starting a DIYBio lab

Thanks for offering such a detailed and thoughtful response to my questions.

The feedback and suggestions will be really valuable and I'll pass it onto my contact at the Business Accelerator. 

I'm based in New Zealand and I'm working with universities in my country's two largest cities who each support innovation spaces for their students and local hobbyists. 

I'm actually working on a commercial project at the moment that exploits the opportunities offered by biological processes and organisms to transform agricultural waste into valuable products in an industrial context. I just see the tremendous potential provided by the natural world to inspire product design, transform industrial processes, create novel materials, and other biologically derived products. I see that providing spaces like DIYBio Labs will open up access to tools and equipment that have been only available to biotech companies and public research bodies, like universities and government research institutes. This affords the potential for hobbyists and tinkers the opportunity to collaborate and benefit from multidisciplinary cooperation between people with skills from a wide array of disciplines that may not be possible in traditional settings because of rivalries between the different scientific fields.and competition for resources and funding. Not to mention the reluctance of researchers to share knowledge and credit for discoveries and commercialization of their research.

On Wednesday, 30 August 2017 15:38:47 UTC+12, James Edwards wrote:

hello all

Just discovered this community through the BioCurious DIYBio Lab. I'm currently in talks with a variety of stakeholders about starting a DIYBio lab at an innovation space affiliated with a local university. I've had contact with a business incubator who indicated they could be willing to offer support or resources to help build the Bio Lab, but they requested that I contact other similar initiatives elsewhere around the world and that I ask some questions related to measuring the impact of the space. 

Could anyone in the community help me with this

What numbers typically use the community DIYBio Labs that you're involved with?

What's the typical mix of people who use it? Are people typically use the Lab professional scientists? Hobbyists? Novices? Science students? Artists? Tinkerers? 

Is there perceivable value generated by opening up a bio lab to a diverse, interdisciplinary group of people who specialize in different fields and domains? 

Have there been commercial spinoffs that have come out of collaborations in the DIYBio Labs?

Do people at the Lab contribute to participatory science projects or open access science publications?