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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…

Here at ChiTownBio, we encourage exploration and the DIY mindset in more areas than just biology. We love to meet people who are avid makers and programmers as well! In fact, programming is a super useful skill for DIY biology in both analyzing data and designing low-cost hardware, so I’ve been teaching myself some new…

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…

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.…

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…

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…