Making Biology for Everyone
Biology is around us, in us, and is us. From the beginning of human society to now, we have been creating, engineering, designing with biology. Yet, most people don’t feel connected to biology or feel empowered to innovate using biology.
How do we empower people to look within their own communities, needs, and experiences to innovate with biology? We need to change the culture around STEM to amplify existing, local knowledge and empower creativity with biology.
What if anyone was able to look around and engineer solutions to their own problems?
What if biology innovation started locally in libraries, community gardens, parking lots? Through conversation at home, solutions can emerge that address global needs. We can spark a cultural shift that changes how people feel about biology.
As a Biosecurity and Innovation Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford University, I led a research project studying how decentralized bioengineering spaces can advance social and environmental justice: Biology for Everyone (BIO4E): https://bio4e.stanford.edu/.
Our transdisciplinary team of biologists, community organizers, artists, policymakers, engineers, youth, and more developed a policy roadmap to create a network of free, publicly accessible biology labs: LABraries, and a new profession to support these community spaces: LABrarians.
Community Biology
I have been supporting community-based biology explorations through BioJam Camp and co-organizing the Governance track of the Global Community BioSummit.
Since 2019, I have also had the privilege to co-create BioJam Camp with collaborators Corinne Okada Takara, an artist and arts educator in San Jose, CA, Rolando Cruz Perez, a PhD candidate in Stanford’s Department of Bioengineering and founder non-profit Xinampa, a variety of community organizers, educators, activists, artists, gardeners, and biohackers, and Stanford students as co-president and founder of Volunteer Student Organization BioJam CoLABS (Community Learning through Art, Biodesign, and Solidarity).
BioJam engages teens from low-income communities of color in the Bay Area (East San Jose, Oakland, South Monterey County, and Salinas) to explore biodesign and bioengineering as a platform to learn, share, and connect to their community. Now, BioJam is primarily focused on supporting migrant youth in the Salinas Valley of California. Through our camp, we nurture participant’s confidence and curiosity as they grow into science practitioners and educators, provide a research and training opportunity for scientists, and to create accessible entry points for community engagement with biotechnology.
Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Fellowship
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Fall 2021 (Full time internship)
In the fall of 2021, I moved to Washington, DC to participate in the Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Fellowship at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. I worked on the Board of Life Sciences (BLS).
Through my work with the Response and Resilient Recovery Strategic Science Initiative’s(R3SSI) Strategy Group on COVID-19 and Ecosystem Services in the Built Environment, I collaborated with an interdisciplinary team to expand on my ecological expertise to familiarize myself with a new literature base (ecosystem services, green infrastructure) and consulted with experts to design a novel activity for the National Academies associated with strategic planning.
For the Board on Life Sciences’ Fall Board Meeting, I applied my expertise in microbial ecology to summarize and present research “10 years on '' from BLS’ consensus report on Microbial Forensics.
I also designed a collaborative art project with BLS staff with a permanent exhibition in the NASEM Keck Building.
If you are interested in applying for the Mirzayan, I highly recommend reading this doc about the applying for the program created by former fellows, especially Melody Tan. I also wrote a blog post about the Mirzayan program.
Stanford Science Policy Group (SSPG)
2019-2022 - Science Policy
I was the 2020-2021 president of the Stanford Science Policy group, a campus chapter of a national network of science policy groups. I operated a core organizing team of 40+ graduate students, undergraduates, postdocs, staff and faculty across six committees. SSPG organizes events and workshops on campus for students who are interested in learning about science policy and advocacy in partnership with the Public Policy Program, Stanford Law School and the Graduate School of Business. With SSPG, I grew the organization from 40 members to nearly 250 and won grants from the National Science Policy Network and Research!America. Previously, I was involved in a science policy working group, which, in partnership with Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), connected STEM graduate students and faculty with policy makers and researchers in law, public policy, and economics.
Policy advocacy and additional training
I was a science policy Hill Day participant with the two scientific professional societies, the American Society of Microbiology (2020) and the Ecological Society of America as a Katherine S. McCarter Graduate Policy Award winner (2020). With these societies, I participated in meetings with Congressional staffers advocating for a variety of policy positions.
I also received additional policy training as a graduate ethics fellow with Stanford’s McCoy Center for Ethics (2019-2020) and as a BioFuture Fellow with Stanford’s Department of Bioengineering and Bio.Polis (2020-2021).