Difference between revisions of "Team:Dalhousie/HP/Silver"

Talking with Experts

Su-Ling Brooks, PhD, Department of Process Engineering and Applied Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada
Dr. Brooks’ research revolves around bioprocessing, food engineering, fermentation, extraction of natural products, and waste utilization and treatment. For this reason, we eagerly wanted to speak to her about the biofuel component of our project, and our ideas surrounding bioreactor construction. We presented her with two bioreactor ideas (see images below). The first option involved two bioreactors, one specifically for E. coli to degrade cellulose into glucose, and another for yeast to convert glucose into ethanol. The second option involved one bioreactor and a E. coli-yeast co-culture. During the course of our presentation, Dr. Brooks posed many insightful questions primarily surrounding the logistics of co-cultures, and the requirements of our organisms. At the end of the meeting we came away realizing that we still had a lot to learn about bioreactors. It was at this meeting that we began drawing up plans for future shake flask experiments.

Mark Dubé, Port Hawkesbury Paper, Cape Breton, Canada
Mark elaborated on the cellulose waste treatment at the Port Hawkesbury pulp and paper mill in Cape Breton and identified two main types of waste: bark chips and a mix of clay, cellulose, and organic phosphates. All this waste goes into a biomass boiler to produce the steam needed to dry the paper in downstream processes. “We have looked into biofuel production, but it is too expensive…the technology isn’t efficient enough.” Currently, Port Hawkesbury Paper buys wood waste from surrounding companies to fill it’s need for steam.

Dr. Eddy Rubin, Chief Science Officer, Metabiota, San Francisco, USA
Dr. Rubin has years of metagenomics under his belt, so we asked him which was better: sequencing-based or functional metagenomics? “Well, functional is great but I’m a sequencing guy... I’m interested in scalable things.” Dr. Rubin’s argument was with the advent of next generation sequencing and better DNA synthesis, you can produce terabytes of data and synthesize whatever you want from it. This is a much more scalable process, you don’t have to spend years designing functional assays.
See the rest of Dr. Rubin’s interview here. (link out)

David Lloyd, Co-founder and Director, FREDsense, Calgary, Canada
David Lloyd was involved in iGEM during his undergraduate degree at University of Alberta and as a mentor during his Masters degree at University of Calgary. During his time at the University of Calgary he, and a team of students, developed a biosensor which morphed into the company FREDsense. We asked for his insight on how to develop an iGEM project into a company. “Spend your time really figuring out what the value your product is going to provide to that customer base. Picking up the phone and having those conversations is really important. It was through that process […] we ended up changing the sensor we were building to look at other market opportunities.”
See the rest of David Lloyd’s interview here. (link out)

Scott Doncaster, Vice President, Manufacturing Technologies and Engineering, BioVectra, Charlottetown, Canada
BioVectra is a contract pharmaceutical fermentation plant that using bacteria and fungi to produce small molecule drugs or biologics. Being in charge of manufacturing and engineering, Scott is well versed in safety practices. Although BioVectra works with BSL-1 organisms, the volume of organisms they use requires them to treat the bacteria or fungi as if they were BSL-2. We asked Scott what safety mechanisms must be in place for large scale fermentation to work. “Containment is key! Rooms have slanted floors so [if a spill were to happen] it all goes into a contained grate, that would get autoclaved in emergencies. The building has been built with special air circulation, sterilization tools, air locks, temperature control and much more.”

Stephen Snobelen, PhD, Associate Professor of Humanities, University of King’s, Halifax, Canada
Some of Dr. Snobelen’s research interest include science in popular culture, and the popularization of science, therefore we knew we wanted to meet with him to discuss our science literacy survey. We did not have much previous survey planning experience to draw upon, and thus it was great to get an expert opinion on how to form unbiased questions. Dr. Snobelen advised us not to use the phrase “science illiterate” as it could potentially polarize the audience. Furthermore, we discussed that people are not scientifically literate or illiterate. For instance, someone could be literate in biology, but have a poor understanding about physics. For this reason, we tried to instead paint the idea that science literacy is a spectrum.