BioDojo, Version 2
Meet BD21 & have a look at what's been going on during this past quarter
Hard to believe that BioDojo’s only been around for a little over 9 months. Since our last update we’ve successfully completed our inaugural cohort; selected just above 25 top young undergraduate innovators to join #BD21, our second cohort; onboarded several mentors from across the biotech space, from those creating immunogenicity predictors to building out a ubiquitous software for biological analysis; and several more exciting things!
As always, we’re grateful to have you join us as we reveal what this growing community has been up to over the past three months, and what to expect before the end of 2022. Big things ahead, but are we really surprised with the kind of people we have here? Let’s dive in.
Meet BD21!
We are excited to briefly introduce the members here at BD21. Don’t worry — although these are short, I’m sure you’ll have the opportunity to get to see them plenty more times on Twitter and throughout our future events. Here they are :)
Jibraan is a first-year molecular biology and genetics student at the University of Guelph. Over the past few months, he has been diving into the gene editing and synthetic biology space, working on many projects during that time. His most recent project is focused on creating hypoallergenic peanuts with CRISPR-Cas9.
Jack studies Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) at the University of Oxford. He was a classic Asian STEM kid before aspiring to become a diplomat - hence PPE! He recently shut down an iPSC organoid pre-clinical drug testing startup. It was in the Panacea Stars' 2020 cohort. He previously built a game, ran a recruitment agency, and worked on an AI SaaS product.
Shayan is a 3rd year student at the University of Toronto who attempts to best connect his studies from Computer Science to Life Science, all in order to pursue his passions in healthcare and biotechnology. He is currently interested in the evolving landscape of biotech-companies and the diversification of funding in the sector via either a decentralized approach or private funding.
Irhum is a sophomore CS major at Minerva University. He has a background in applied deep learning, and his current focus is using recent ideas in deep learning (such as equivariance) to improve bioinformatics software.
Sofia is a high school senior doing research at the intersection of synthetic biology and microbiomes. She's currently studying the correlation between the gut microbiome and insomnia.
Apurva is a first year QBReC (Quantitative Biology Research Community) scholar at Brandeis University intending to major in biological physics; her current focus is on an independent research project with the long-term aim of achieving organic human limb regeneration.
Carol is a 2nd year student at Northwestern University studying genetics and molecular biology. She’s had experience in a genetics startup and is currently researching free cell metabolic engineering.
Daniel is a sophomore CS major at the University of California Los Angeles. He works on DNA/RNA sequencing analysis tools as an intern at 10x Genomics and likes coding in Rust.
Nathaniel is a fourth-year computer science and mathematics student at the University of Minnesota researching sampling techniques for protein engineering.
That’s less than 50% of our new cohort and yes, everyone’s super, super cool — both professionally and personally. We’re really excited for you to meet them so make sure to stay connected with us on Twitter.
The Past 12 Weeks at BioDojo
So yes, we’ve onboarded our new cohort but still continued on the learning here at BioDojo, hosting public events as well as several exclusive fireside chats, tapping into the incredible insights our mentors and guests have. Here are a few highlights.
Topping up our exclusive fireside are two more public events in the books — on decentralizing research funding (by Tyler and Paul), and implementing applied progress studies (by Alexey Guzey).
Paul Kohlhaas and Tyler Golato — on Molecule’s vision of decentralizing research funding, and making sure drug development is collaborative, open, and decentralized
Alexey Guzey — on implementing applied progress, the work of New Science, and on his essay on how the life sciences actually work
Building our Community, and helping our Community Build
As always, we’ve put our paramount focus here on building community — breaking down professional barriers and stigmas to focus on fostering genuine relationships that go beyond the CV. We’ve shared our learnings with each other, supported each other through personal and professional ambitions, and continued to support our notion that there are undergrads capable of changing the landscape of biotech.
For this cohort, we want to tap into the “default-to-build” common denominator and are extremely proud to announce our first ever Dojo Build Series! We’re releasing it to the public, so if you want to get in on the action with BD21, check out our publically released case competition released on our Twitter.
Lots of exciting stuff up ahead, so make sure to follow us on Twitter to stay in the loop. Hint: we have got some HUGE disruptive news at the end of 2021.
Cheers, and keep building.
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