Open Hardware for Open Science – Interview with Charles Fracchia | Hackaday

" ... At this year’s SXSW Interactive, we had an opportunity to talk with [Charles Fracchia], a renaissance hacker at the MIT Media Lab. Reinforcing the Media Lab’s “eclectic genius” stereotype, [Charles]’s background spans an impressive range of fields—from Synthetic Biology to Biomedical Engineering and beyond. A biologist by training, he is also a self-taught hardware hacker and, these days, is spending most of his time building 'hybrid' systems at the intersection of Biology, Computer Science, and Electrical Engineering. True to the hacker spirit of open collaboration and sharing, he is also a big proponent of Open Science and is committed to making it a reality in the field of Biomedical Research. Most of [Charles’] recent work has been motivated by the surprising fact that a vast proportion of peer-reviewed biological research is not independently reproducible[1]. Reproducibility is a huge challenge in this field, and part of the problem lies in the fact that a number of environmental factors that could impact the results of the experiments are currently not captured at all. The solution that [Charles] and his team are working on is a range of environmental sensor nodes, designed to be packaged as a part of the standard biological lab equipment. Such nodes could enable an easy collection of necessary data in a 'natural' environment of the experiment, making it easier to pinpoint the exact conditions under which the results were obtained. It is projects like this, especially if created as Open Hardware, which have the potential to change the Open Science game in Biomedical Research. Affordable, peer-reviewed hardware that every lab can independently manufacture can show the way to standardization in the sharing of experimental data. [Charles] and his team are committed to this mission and are taking things beyond academia and into the real world. They are starting a project called BioBright, which aims at revolutionizing the biology lab and making Open Science in this space a reality ..."