Author: Andy Scarpelli

Every year, at the end of September, ChiTownBio hosts a beach cleanup event as part of The Alliance for the Great Lakes day of action. For the last few years, we have been assigned Osterman Beach, and we have led a group of volunteers in scouring the beach for trash and litter and collecting and…

In 2014, Illinois became the first state to ban microbeads in cosmetics and soaps. By the end of this year (2019), no microbeads will be legally sold in the state. Multiple states have followed suit, including many of the important Great Lakes states.  What exactly are microbeads? Microbeads are tiny pieces of plastic that do…

Hello Chicago Citizen Scientists, Amateur Biologists, and the Generally Curious, After two years of growing our community, conversing with members, developing our brand and giving talks, hosting demos, and participating in fairs and festivals, ChiTownBio is excited to be moving into the next phase of our growth. After generous donations for community members and grants…

This week, our Slack (Private online chat board) has been abuzz as always with various conversations, but one became pertinent for our event tomorrow at Empirical Brewery. This week, we’re going to be working with mushrooms, looking at kingdom Fugni in all its glory. We’re going to be building sculptures, learning to grow mushrooms, playing…

I can remember the first time I saw a Cerulean Warbler. When I moved to the city of Chicago many, many years ago, it was the heart of winter. I spent a number of hours a month in the conservatories of Chicago, and the Lincoln Park Conservatory convinced me to train as a docent in…

We probably need to stop calling our event on Thursday Kombucha-Palooza, but we really want to celebrate this drink. It might be hipster swill, but there are a lot of reasons it represents a really cool biotechnology. Beyond the fact that brewing kombucha is a historically relevant system of fermentation, the SCOBY, symbiotic community of…

Happy 2019, everyone! We have been busy bees here at ChiTownBio (Altough not the genetically modified ones), and we’ve had quite the year. We’ve grown some mushroom sculptures with some supplies from our friends at Ecovative,  enjoyed some fermented food (Ginger beer recipes for the win!), done some art with slime molds, played with some…

It’s been a while since we’ve sent out an update, but we wanted to inform you about some exciting events coming in the next few weeks at ChiTownBio. This week, please get excited about our upcoming event on biochemistry at the Empirical Taproom this Thursday (September 25th)! We’re going to be playing with some easily…