Charlottesville Open Bio Labs (COBL) aims to establish a community bioscience center in Charlottesville to engage citizens in biotechnology innovation through training workshops and lab access. COBL seeks to join the growing do-it-yourself biology movement and transform Charlottesville into a biotech hub. The founders have held successful introductory meetups and workshops and plan to launch a Biohacker Academy program using the funding request to secure a location and equipment. Their vision is for COBL to become a self-sustaining community resource that educates the public and contributes to the local biotech industry and workforce.

1. Charlottesville Open Bio Labs info@OpenBioLabs.org
OpenBioLabs.org 434-878-2355
Charlottesville Open Bio Labs
A Community Bioscience Center
Charlottesville Open Bio Labs (COBL) aims to catalyze the transformation of Charlottesville
into a biotech hot spot by engaging citizens in the process of biotech innovation through the
development of a community bioscience center.
Around the world, there is a growing do-it-yourself biology (DIY Bio) movement that is
challenging the status quo of scientific inquiry and innovation. This movement is the result of the
increasing democratization of knowledge, the plummeting cost of scientific research, the rising
popularity of crowd-sourced citizen science, and the characterization of a tremendous repository
of genetic parts. In response, over 60 cities, domestic and international, have opened their own
community labs because they recognize that low-barrier access to wet labs fosters learning and
innovation in the blooming field of biotechnology and synthetic biology.
It’s time for Charlottesville to join the movement. We introduce Open Bio Labs as a new space
to serve Charlottesville’s unique, forward-thinking community of hands-on learners and doers.
We invite our scientists, architects, designers, educators, artists, engineers, and the entire
community to create breakthroughs using the greatest creation of all: Life.
We seek one year of support to assist Open Bio Labs’ growth into a successful enterprise.
Our vision of success include:
 Established training workshops providing members with lab experience
 Self-sustaining funds via paid memberships, workshops, lab-bench rental, and state
grants for STEMs education
 Outreach programs for middle- and high-school students
 Contributions to science with local, national and global impact

2. Charlottesville Open Bio Labs info@OpenBioLabs.org
OpenBioLabs.org 434-878-2355
Mission
Synthetic Biology will be a defining technology of the 21st century, just as computers
transformed the world in the decades leading up to the new millennium. We are in the vacuum
tube era of synthetic biology; this field has the potential to revolutionize almost every industry,
as shown below.
Open Bio Labs aims to educate our community about the rising tide of synthetic biology and
biotechnology. People are naturally curious about science but they commonly perceive it as
daunting and inaccessible. Open Bio Lab exists to show citizens they, too, can be scientists by
demonstrating that science is accessible to anybody with an interest.
Charlottesville is the perfect home for Open Bio Labs because we are a very energetic
community that loves to make, explore, and live on the frontier of technology and science. We’re
a highly educated community with blossoming technology and biotechnology industries. These
growing local industries form the perfect crossroads for the coming wave of synthetic biology,
and Open Bio Labs is the perfect catalyst for the community to ride the rising tide. We will also
educate, train, and certify individuals for low-barrier STEM jobs to develop our local workforce
and economy.

3. Charlottesville Open Bio Labs info@OpenBioLabs.org
OpenBioLabs.org 434-878-2355
Aims
 Educate the community about Biology, its current and potential impact, and the role it
plays in the Charlottesville community and in the broader global community.
 Make biology more accessible to the average citizen by providing workshops and a
laboratory for the community to safely tinker in and learn hands-on. Encourage
grassroots science and establish a new environment for scientific inquiry outside
traditional academia.
 Encourage the collaboration of people from multiple different disciplines towards
biology.
 Provide supplemental courses to those taught by UVA, PVCC, and high schools for
credit. A space of exploration outside of the traditional educational institutions could
encourage a new type of curiosity and creativity.
 Provide jobs, internships and work studies for students and community members.
 Encourage independent inquiry and scientific development that might one day lead to
impactful research or commercial products.
 Serve as the hub of Charlottesville’s biotech community by:
o being the focal point between the citizens, our educational institutions, and our
companies, possibly through company/programmatic showcases and/or career
matching.
o being the voice for our professional biotech community to the city and the state.
o being a center where speakers and other biotech related events can be held.
Relevant Constituents

4. Charlottesville Open Bio Labs info@OpenBioLabs.org
OpenBioLabs.org 434-878-2355
Progress
Online Meetup Inception: Nov, 2014
First Meetup: January 14, 2015
We have consistently held meetups every
other week since then, giving crash courses
in synthetic biology, lectures about the
growth and future of biotechnology,
providing a well-received hands-on
demonstration of strawberry DNA
extractions, and more.
We started with 4 core members and have steadily grown to 12-15 regular members. Attendees
at our workshops range from 10 year old elementary school students to retirees, but are mostly in
their 20’s and 30’s. While most attendees have some college level education, the majority of
their disciplines are not in life sciences. Our meetup group online boasts 80 members that we
have acquired since November with no promotion at all other than having a group profile on the
meetup page, thus demonstrating a latent desire to learn about science. We have received
donations and we earned our first profit from the Strawberry DNA Extraction workshop. Our
core group is dedicated to the implementation of COBL and we have begun developing action
plans for every aspect of this lab, from biosafety to community and education. We have begun
conversations with multiple parties that have voiced their interest to support us.
Recently, Shaun travelled to Amsterdam to attend a Biohacker Academy partner lab coordinator
boot camp. The purpose of his trip was to integrate into the global Biohacker community and
bring this academy back to Charlottesville. The community has been so supportive of this
endeavor that they have donated $750 so far to help cover the costs.
Action Plan
The Biohacker Academy will be COBL’s inaugural program. The Biohacker Academy, running
from September 15th to November 17th, is a 10 week program where each week we build a piece
of equipment and conduct a wet lab experiment. The successful completion of this program will
provide:
 Most of the equipment necessary to run a basic biology laboratory.
 An immediate source of revenue.
 A member base with ongoing projects from which to build off.
 A wonderful marketing tool for further outreach.
 Integration with an international consortium of biohacker laboratories.
 A future source of revenue as we become the first chapter in the United States and are
therefore able to help start other partner laboratories across the states.
0
20
40
60
80
Meetup Group Membership

5. Charlottesville Open Bio Labs info@OpenBioLabs.org
OpenBioLabs.org 434-878-2355
The month of July will be spent identifying and securing a location for our wetlab. Additionally,
we will be heavily recruiting students for the Biohacker Academy, securing partnerships and
securing additional funding. The month of August will be spent acquiring the equipment,
materials and supplies necessary to run the academy.
Throughout this year, we will be continuously updating our membership, workshop, and
outreach targets in order to set realistic but aggressive goals for ourselves by:
 Conducting surveys
 Analyzing the demographics of our contingency
 Aligning ourselves with state and city diversity initiatives
 Analyzing the price elasticity of our workshops
We will develop a sustainable funding mix by:
 Analyzing the expense profile of COBL
 Forecasting workshop and membership revenue
 Developing business models that include contract work
 Forging partnerships with key players in the ecosystem, including UVA, PVCC, COS,
the City of Charlottesville, and the State of Virginia.
We will determine long term growth goals by incorporating the needs of the community and of
the stakeholders into COBL’s grand vision.
Budget

6. Charlottesville Open Bio Labs info@OpenBioLabs.org
OpenBioLabs.org 434-878-2355
Leadership
Shaun recently finished his BS in Biochemistry and Physics in 2013 and his MS in Commerce in
2014, both at UVA. He was a part of UVA’s iGEM team in 2012 and 2013 and his 2013 team
helped start an iGEM team at Renaissance High School. His 2012 iGEM project, PhageFlag,
was funded by the UVA-Coulter Translational Research Partnership where they raised over
$250,000 over the course of two years.
Through his experience with starting biotech projects, he has started an organization called
BioTrep with the purpose of facilitating the development and commercialization of student led
biotech projects. Last fall BioTrep had their inaugural workshop series, which reached about 40
students and started about 10 projects. Those projects competed in UVA’s Entrepreneurship cup
and cumulatively won $38,500. Three of those projects are being pursued, two of which have
found a home within a UVA laboratory. BioTrep now has a team of interns working to
incorporate the feedback they received last year into their business model and to prepare for the
upcoming fall program.
Shaun is intimately integrated into Charlottesville’s biotech community. He is a board member
and the membership chair of the Charlottesville Business Innovation Council and remains
integrated with the UVA community.
We are calling upon all the stakeholders in our community to help make Charlottesville
Open Bio Labs a reality. We have demonstrated there is a thirst for a DIY Bio Community
in Charlottesville and Charlottesville Open Bio Labs is here to satiate that need!