Introduction to the Idea
When you've spent countless hours reading about different yeast or bacterial strains and their life cycles, it's almost inevitable that a thought crosses your mind: "But is this even true?" In those moments, you try to summon a bit of faith, sprinkle in a lot of creativity, and just keep reading. Then, occasionally, the stars (or microbial metabolic pathways) align to give you a little wink. That’s exactly what happened the day I first discovered the company Pioreactor. A small, affordable gadget that allowed me to digitally and remotely monitor the microbial growth of the yeasts and bacteria I had been theorizing about for so long. The excitement I felt in that moment was only matched by the first time I peered through a microscope and saw the lemon-shaped cell of Brettanomyces bruxellensis.
Picture by PioReactor
Fulfilling a need
Months after having purchased and used the Pioreactor almost frenetically, another question popped into my head... What if I could incorporate more sensors to gather even more data on my microbial cultures? The answer was simply complex: I just needed to increase the diameter of the vial... from 1.5 cm to 8 cm. How hard could it be to scale a bioreactor from 15 ml to 500 ml? All the questions and answers that have accompanied (and continue to accompany) me in this project are captured in this logbook, filled with joys, frustrations, and countless milligrams of caffeine.
Picture by PioReactor
PS70
The space where this project has been (and continues to be) carried out is the Fabrication Lab at the Science Center. I am deeply grateful to the entire team for their endless patience with me, as about six weeks ago, when I am writing this (Oct. 15, 2024), I didn’t even know things like Fusion, calipers, or even volts existed. Thank you! The Fabrication Lab is what the French anthropologist Marc Augé would call a "place"—that is, a space filled with curiosity, where "things" can actually happen.
Fabrication Lab at Harvard