About us

What are we doing?

We are working with teachers, educators and citizens to educate the public about open science and particularly with sequencing, data-analysis, molecular biology, their benefits and implications.

The problem

At a time when so many decisions are being made on the basis of science, it is becoming increasingly important to inform the public about the issues at stake. Popularization of science is then important to educate the public about the benefits and implications of the scientific news. It is particularly true for the biotechnologies and DNA sequencing.

At a time where scientific advances happen faster then ever and new technologies enter the market at a unprecedentedly speed, education and clarification becomes a key factor to remove fears and sustain a open society. It is particularly true for the field of biotechnology and molecular biology. Due to the rapid development in this field, more and more citizens get into contact with these techniques. For example personalized medicine, services like 23andMe or AI are entering our daily life. We strive to shed light into scientific blackboxes by facilitating hands-on experience and data analysis with ground-breaking technologies to make the scientific process more tangible.

The solution

The Street Science Community is a voluntary-based non-profit group that aims to bring science to the public. We aim to organize workshops in which pupils, students and citizens come into contact with molecular biology, data-analysis, and open science by extracting, sequencing and analyzing of DNA.

Our main project, BeerDEcoded, aims to sensibilize the participants to molecular biology and genomic related research, DNA sequencing and data analysis and the challenges and possibilities that genomics brings to our society.

Who are we?

We think that knowledge transfer from different domains is crucial for this project hence Street Science Community consists of people with different expertise and skills. Computational- and molecular biology researchers as well as Bioinformaticians and we are all dealing with life-science problems on a daily basis, but from different angles.

Bérénice Batut

@bebatut

Bérénice is a trained bioinformatician with experience in metagenomics and sequencing data analysis. She is a contributor of the Galaxy community, particularly in the Galaxy Training Network, and also part of the Carpentries and a Mozilla Open Leaders fellow.

Björn Grüning

@bjoerngruening

Björn has initiated the Galaxy project in Freiburg and is in charge of the European web server.

Stephan Nothjunge

@NothSteph

Stephan is a trained Molecular Biologist currently finishing his PhD and an expert in epigenetics.

Florian Eggenhofer

@eggtron

Florian is a trained biologist with a extensive knowledge about computer science. He is a PostDoc in Bioinformatics and expert in transcriptomics and genomics.

Florian Heyl

@Spike_Black_Sun

Florian studied Bioinformatics in his Masters, currently doing his PhD. He has experience in machine learning and transcriptomics.

Melanie Föll

@MCFoell

Melanie is a pharmacist by training and is currently doing her PhD in Proteomics. She is a self-trained Galaxy data analysis expert and tool developer.

Milad Miladi

@MiladMiladi_

Milad is a computational biology researcher with experience in transcriptomics analysis and Nanopore 3rd-gen. sequencing technologies.

Teresa Müller

@tesamueller

Teresa is an educated bioinformatician doing a PhD in RNA bioinformatics.

William Durand

@couac

William is an Open Source Software evangelist, traveler, sometimes runner and speaker. He currently works at Mozilla.

Julius Wehrle

Julius is a medical doctor and working in the Department of Internal Medicine.

Our values

We have high ethical standards, including:

Education: Help educate the public about science and biotechnology, their benefits and implications
Transparency: Emphasize transparency and the sharing of ideas, knowledge, data, protocols and results.
Open science: Promote citizen science and decentralized access to science.
Modesty Know you don’t know everything.
Community: Carefully listen to any concerns and questions and respond honestly
Respect: Respect humans and all living systems.
Responsibility: Recognize the complexity and dynamics of living systems and our responsibility towards them.

What do we need?

You! In whatever way you can help.

We need expertise in fundraising, science, education, communication, interaction with the public. We’d love your feedback along the way, and of course.

Get involved

If you think you can help in any of the areas listed above (and we bet you can) or in any of the many areas that we haven’t yet thought of (and here we’re sure you can) then please check out our contributors’ guidelines and our roadmap.

Please note that it’s very important to us that we maintain a positive and supportive environment for everyone who wants to participate. When you join us we ask that you follow our code of conduct in all interactions both on and offline.

Want to join the Street Science Community and participate in the upcoming events?

You are very welcomed and invited to join the community and participate in the upcoming events. You can join the mailing list to get involved or simply contact us at hello[at]streetscience.community or chat with us on Gitter

Current Sponsors

Funding

Mozilla foundation with a Mozilla Open Science Mini-Grants
de.NBI, the German Network for Bioinformatics Infrastructure, for the MinION

Hosting