Winnie Poncelet is the co-founder of ReaGent and Magma Nova, among others, in Gent Belgium. For the last years Winnie worked with a growing community of biohackers and found interesting ways of being productive, research different topics and become good friends. Winnie's expertise lies in growing fungi as a new biomaterial to replace plastics and other conventional materials. We were really happy to have him on the podcast to talk about what can go wrong when growing insects in your basement, what to do with a gifted 454 sequencer, and where the name Magma Nova comes from.
For our second episode we talk to Winnie Poncelet from Ghent, Belgium, about biohacking, biofabrication, open source, strategies for building sustainable independent DIY science communities, and the pitfalls of breeding insects in your parents’ basement.
He co-founded the diybio community lab, ReaGent, in 2015 which has since spun out into an ecosystem of non-profits and companies and cooperatives that work together with a shared goal of knowledge sharing, education, open source development, and making science accessible to all. We’re really wowed by their commitment to openness and decentralisation as tools for social justice and sustainability, and are hugely inspired by how they are evolving the means to make their ideals a reality. Thanks Winnie!
photo courtesy of Winnie Poncelet+ Winnie on twitter
+ ReaGent – community biolab
+ Magma Nova – open source development of mushroom biomaterials
+ Ekoli – hands-on science education with a special focus on underprivileged kids
+ Break it down – science communication agency
The DIY science podcast is an independent production hosted by Lucy Patterson (@lu_cyP / website) and Joram Schwartzmann (@derjoram / website) in kitchens of Berlin. Follow us on twitter @diyscipodcast for more info and updates.
The DIY Science Podcast by Lucy Patterson and Joram Schwartzmann is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at diysciencepodcast.org.