Author: Khalid K. Alam

ChiTownBiologist Ese Osaghe has been talking about bioprinting since the moment he became involved with ChiTownBio. For the uninitiated, bioprinting takes an additive manufacturing (i.e. “3D printing”) approach to creating biomaterials. Bioprinted materials have the potential to print new tissues and organs on demand, to create sustainable and high-performance biomaterials, and to rethink how we…

We wanted to give a HUGE thanks to the Donald C. and Laura M. Harrison Family Foundation for their generous donation to ChiTownBio! Their support will go a long way in helping ChiTownBio find a permanent lab space, purchase much needed equipment, and offer new programming to all the ChiTownBiologists out there! The Donald C.…

ChiTownBio is excited to be attending and speaking at the monthly brunch organized by Podcast Brunch Club’s Chicago Chapter. This month they’re discussing the Citizen Science podcast listening list. You can find the list here: https://podcastbrunchclub.com/citizen-science/ Listen to as much as you can, but don’t worry if you can’t listen to all of it. We’re excited to…

We’ve talked about fermented foods, but we’d love to dive deep into the biology of kombucha, everyone’s favorite fermented fad. What is the drink? How can you start growing it at home? What is a SCOBY? What makes up the SCOBY? Can we examine the organisms there on a petri dish? What can we make…

ChiTownBiologists! Our first meeting of the year is tomorrow, and we couldn’t be more excited. Our theme for this even is “biomaterials,” and we’ll have bags of mycelium growing in various agricultural waste materials thanks to our friends at Ecovative’s GrowBio project. Given the right conditions, mycelium (the root-like structures of fungus) can decompose materials like…

A huge thanks to everyone who came out to our end-of-year meeting last night!  Thanks to Isaac we had a number of Foldscopes for ChiTown Biologists to peer into the microcosmos. For those who are unfamiliar, Foldscopes are a “paper origami” microscope that costs less than a dollar and offer magnification on par with the more…

Paul Dailing, author of the 1,001 Chicago Afternoons blog, has featured ChiTown Bio in his latest blog post! Paul and his wife have been regular attendees at our meetings and the petri art they created last night, described in the blog post, are pictured below! Check out the blog post, “Entry #860: A Virus with My Initials.”