Dr. Ellen Jorgensen is co-founder and Executive Director of Genspace, a nonprofit community laboratory dedicated to promoting citizen science and access to biotechnology. Since 2009 Genspace has served the greater New York area by providing educational outreach, cultural events, and a platform for science innovation at the grassroots level. Ellen is passionate about increasing science literacy in both student and adult populations, particularly in the areas of molecular and synthetic biology. In 2011 she initiated Genspace’s award-winning curriculum of informal science education for adults in biotechnology and synthetic biology. Ellen has mentored three teams in the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition and spearheaded many of Genspace’s outreach programs such as the Urban Barcode Project, a collaboration between Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and Genspace where high school students pursue projects using DNA barcoding. Her efforts to develop Genspace into a haven for entrepreneurship, innovation and citizen science have been chronicled by Nature Medicine, Science, Discover Magazine, BBC News, Dan Rather Reports, PBS News Hour, The Discovery Channel, and The New York Times. Ellen has a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from New York University, spent many years in the biotechnology industry, and is currently adjunct faculty at New York Medical College, the School of Visual Arts, and a Visiting Professor at The Cooper Union. Ellen’s talk ‘Biohacking- you can do it, too’ at TEDGlobal 2012 has received nearly a million views.
Bio + Life Sciences
The New Biohackers: How (and Where) They Work
In a laboratory in New York City, molecular biologist Roy Buchanan is finishing up at the bench for the day. It is eight o’clock in the evening, and while late night work is a familiar scenario for most scientists, the presence of Buchanan’s two young sons playing a game in the common area outside the lab is not. “My wife let me work on this project only if I promised to continue sharing the child care responsibilities,” he explains. A computer programmer by day, Buchanan pursues a self-funded genome editing project in his spare time, enabled by the shared facilities and low price point of Genspace, a community biolab in Brooklyn. Buchanan is not alone. The economic downturn has resulted in a surfeit of unemployed and underemployed scientific experts itching to get back into the lab and flex their underused intellectual muscles.
Andrew Hessel
Programmable Life
Synthetic biology opens new doors on what life can be, and do. How will we utilize the awesome new tools at our disposal? In this video, Andrew Hessel of Autodesk moderates a discussion with Ellen Jorgensen of Genspace and Ryan Phelan of Revive & Restore.
Conferences
Bio 15
Techonomy Bio is a big-picture exploration of the transformative global social and economic benefits driven by the rapid advances being made in the biological and life sciences.
Conferences
Bio 14
The theme for Techonomy 2019 in Half Moon Bay, California was “Reset and Restore: Governing Tech, Retrieving Ethics, and Acting on Climate.” We are in a unique period when corporate responsibility and big-picture thinking is absolutely essential.
