Open Minds, Open Hardware

Radical Science

This episode was recorded in the bowels of Sussex University when we met up with Tom Baden a Neuroscientist interested in how the visual system processes information. Our motivation for chatting to Tom was a brilliant project called the FlyPi that he developed, along with Andre Chagas another Neuroscientist who joined us via the magic of Skype.

FlyPi is a great representation of a seemingly growing phenomena of DIY tools within the labs - you can read the paper for the specs, but in short it's a 3D printed lab for imaging experiments - specifically of the fruit fly (as the name FlyPi might suggest). Along with the FoldScope, and a number of other simple, cheap tools (including a fidget spinner centrifuge ...), the ability to probe the natural world in a meaningful way is being made available to a much wider audience.

We spoke a bunch about Tom's Trend in Africa programme, which trains up researchers in underserved parts of the continent so they're up to scratch with the latest neuroscience tools/knowhow. We also discussed the broad topic of the maker movement in biology, the fear of experimenting with experiments, and the way that DIY hardware in science needs to be shown off in the appropriate venues (and that means not just buried away in the academic literature).

We thoroughly enjoyed chatting to Andre and Tom, and we left feeling energised that the spirit of ingenuity, of tinkering, and playing with science is alive and well.