map_fosh_demand

Hi there, thanks for passing by! This repo is the rallying point for the map_fosh_demand project.

Short explanation:

In a few words, we want to use online surveys to try and figure out what kind of equipment researchers/Bio DIYers/citzen scientists need to do their work and what they currently lack/need.

The long Story:

Science and Education are driving forces for development and prosperity, and therefore should be accessible to everyone, so that people can improve their lives, their environments and communities. Unfortunately, the cost of research equipment used in S&E is quite high and even simple plastic trays cost ~100€.

Who are we:

This project is part of my year as a Mozilla fellow, but it has been long in the making, during chats, discussions and workshops with amazing groups/people around the world. Special mention to Trend in Africa, Open Neuroscience, GOSH community, the Mozilla Foundation, the University of Sussex and Rede de Pesquisadores. (add links/logos).

Pilot run:

Together with Rede de Pesquisadores, a preliminary test survey was conducted in Brazilian Portuguese. If you are interested in seeing the survey, it can be found/answered here.

We gathered ~100 responses which are available here as a .tsv file (emails and identifiers were removed from the file). We've also pre-processed (see the jupyter notebook here to know exactly how we processed the data) the data and some of the results can be seen below [add figures]:

first results:

The first results are in! Here are the tools most demanded according to people whole answered the survey:

optical microscope
thermocycler
electrophysiology system
centrifuge
sequencer
hplc
spectrophotometer
fluorescence microscope
confocal microscope
2-photon microscope
incubator
behavioural setup
real time thermocycler
mass spectrometer
liquid handling robot
gas chromatography system
plate reader
electron microscope
freezer
cytometer
transilluminator

About me:

For about 8 years I've been working to make science more affordable and accessible. The main reason for it is that I stronlgy believe (as many other people do) that science and education are the best ways to bring change and improvement to society. I also believe that local problems are best solved by the people that live in that environment, and therefore my efforts are better employed when I work to provide access to information and to the tools necessary to solve problems/perform experiments. In practical terms this has translated into the following initiatives/collaborations:

• Open Neuroscience: a web repository with open source/affordable projects related to Neurosciences
• Collaboration with TReND in Africa: An NGO dedicated to boosting higher education in the Africa continent via several initiatives -- Workshops, Equipment donation, exchange of researchers, summer schools
  • With Trend we have been running workshops showing researchers how to leverage open technologies to build their own lab equipment
  • We are also creating open source hardware. Some examples can be seen here, here and here.
• Editing Open Source Toolkit Channel from Plos: Together with a great team, we are curating academic papers and other resources describing open source hardware for science.
• Prometheus Science - a project in its initial steps, aiming to bring OS hardware from prototype to consumer products and work with developers so that they get rewarded by their work.

Contributors

Thanks goes to these wonderful people (emoji key):

Andre Maia Chagas 💻

Giovani Felipe Benatto 💻

Alexander Kutschera 💻 🖋

Elizabeth DuPre 🖋

juli arancio 🖋

This project follows the all-contributors specification. Contributions of any kind welcome!