Writing for the Penn Health-Tech blog, Hannah Spector profiled the George H. Stephenson Foundation Educational Laboratory and Bio-MakerSpace, the primary teaching lab for the Department of Bioengineering at Penn Engineering. This interdisciplinary Bio-MakerSpace (aka BioMakerSpace) is open to the entire Penn community for independent research and has become a hub for student startups in recent years:
One example is Strella Biotechnology, founded in 2019 by Katherine Sizov (Biology 2019 & President’s Innovation Prize winner). Strella is developing sensors with the ability to reduce the amount of food waste due to going bad in storage. “Having a Bio-MakerSpace that gives you the functionalities of both a wet lab and a traditional electronics lab is extremely helpful in developing novel technologies” says Sizov on the BE Labs Youtube channel.
The Bio-MakerSpace provides students of all academic backgrounds the resources to turn their ideas into realities, including highly knowledgeable lab staff. Seth Fein (BSE ’20, MSE ’21) has worked at the lab since Fall 2020. “Because bioengineering spans many fields, we encourage interdisciplinary work. Students from Mechanical, Electrical, and Chemical Engineering have all found valuable resources in the lab,” says Fein.
The article also discusses the many resources the BioMakerSpace provides to Penn students and their efforts to keep the lab functional, safe, and open for research and education during the current semester.
Penn Health-Tech is an interdisciplinary center launched in 2017 to advance medical device innovation across the Perelman School of Medicine and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences by forging collaborative connections among Penn researchers and providing seed funding to incubate novel ideas to advance health care.
Continue reading “The Bio-MakerSpace — Fostering Learning and Innovation Across Many Disciplines” at the Penn Health-Tech blog.