Bioworks Institute

Interdisciplinary endeavors that seek to rethink biological art and design.
33 Flatbush Avenue, 7th Floor Brooklyn, NY 11217 TEL: 617.620.1575

Positioned at the confluence of art and science, we are a tightly knit
group of designers, artists and scientists who seek to develop new
forms of biological products and designs using biotechnology. The
skills and ideas each of us bring to this project will, we predict,
synergize to produce a radical new architectural craft.

The time has finally arrived when the costs of biotechnology have
diminished to make it financially practical for these tools to be
applied by small groups of skilled and motivated individuals. In
essence, our endeavor harkens back to an earlier era of small craft
workshops, albeit utilizing state-of-the-art techniques and resources.

Ever since the advent of novel forms of genetically engineered
micro-organisms containing human and other genes, originally utilized
as "protein-factories" if you will, coupled with the established
technologies of tissue culturing, we seek to develop not just new
organisms, synthetic ecosystems as well.

Until just recently, the application of these revolutionary biological
technologies have been used almost exclusively by big-pharma and
other large scale for-profit consortiums. It is seen in pharmaceutical
companies carrying out massively parallel robotically guided screens
for small drug molecules to the equally massive shot-gun screening
of the human genome at the dawn of the new century.

This is contrasted with the relatively much smaller scale of cutting
edge development carried out by academia, whose fruits of scientific
labor are all too often co-opted by corporations.
We aim to change this condition and rethink biotech.

Co-Founders: Oliver Medvedik, Ph.D. and Mitchell Joachim, Ph.D.
Bioworks Institute
EMAIL: omedvedik at gmail dot com

PROFILE:
Dr. Medvedik earned his Ph.D. from Harvard Medical School in the Biomedical and Biological Sciences program. As part of his doctoral work he has used single-celled budding yeast as a genetic system to map pathways that underlie the processes of aging in more complex organisms, such as humans. Prior to arriving in Boston in 1999 for his doctoral studies, he has lived most of his life in New York City. He obtained his bachelor's degree in biology from Hunter College, City University of New York, in 1998. Since graduating in 2006 from Harvard, he has worked as a biotechnology consultant, taught numerous undergraduates at Harvard University and mentored two of Harvard's teams for the annual synthetic biology competition (iGEM) held at M.I.T. Now, he is the principal investigator at the Bioworks Institute laboratory for art and biology in Brooklyn, New York. Also Oliver is on the board of directors for the non-profit organization Genspace, a biological reasearch incubator that is dedicated to teaching genetic engineering.

Wired UK- "Alive and ticking: the watch made out of skin," by Giorgia Scaturro

Genspace: New York City's Community Lab