139. Cultivating a Culture of Cultures? Genspace's Casey Lardner on Community Biotech

[00:00:03] Karl: All right, Dr. Casey Larner of Genspace, we are so thrilled to have you on the Grow Everything Podcast.

[00:00:09] Casey: Hi Carl. How you rum? Thank you so much for having me. I can't believe I'm here. I listen all the time, so this is very exciting.

[00:00:16] Karl: long time listeners know that IAM and I have a special connection with Genspace. We've met there and we've been big supporters. I think some people know I'm on the board at Gen Space, so why don't we just get into it. I mean, you were a neuroscientist, you were studying brains.

[00:00:32] Karl: Now you lead the premier community bio lab in the world. What made you take the leap from academia into public science?

[00:00:41] Casey: Oh, there are so many answers. To that question, but from the time I started grad school at Mount Sinai, I did my PhD at Mount Sinai in New York. I knew that I wanted to be very involved in outreach and public education, and so as soon as I started, I joined the institutional outreach group, which is called Minds Mentoring and Neuroscience Discovery at Sinai, because neuroscientists love acronyms.

[00:01:02] Karl: They're not alone.

[00:01:03] Casey: yeah, so I got involved in that group. Ended up co-directing it for a couple of years in graduate school. , And I think that is because I always had really wonderful mentors who celebrated my other interests, as far back as my first research mentor in undergrad, , and even further, Back then that my, high school science teacher, I was a competitive runner and so my high school science teacher was also my coach. when I got involved in science and I ended up running, , competitive track and field in college, I didn't have as much time for research because I was running a lot, but I just always had, teachers and mentors who.

[00:01:39] Casey: Supported that and saw it as really important. And so I think I've just always seen how powerful it is when you can blend science with your other interests. I also just felt it was very important to be a good educator while you were learning to become a researcher. So I was very important to me.

[00:01:55] Casey: And through those circles. I think I found Genspace in 2020 on a listserv of outreach and informal education in New York. And I took a class online in 2020 when everything was online. Their programming had moved online. and I just fell in love. I was like, they are manifesting what it means to do civic science for science too.

[00:02:15] Casey: Be connected to real life. And so I was like, I must get more involved. And so I started volunteering, , and mentoring. I taught a neuroscience class at the lab, and then I joined the staff in 2023. So the rest is history. I just, , have always felt that doing science is a civic act. so it's important to get your science outta the lab, while you're doing it.

[00:02:36] Erum: Oh wow. Yeah. I mean, we're gonna get into it. And I love the phrase you use blending science with interest and feel like that's really core to. Building this community and we will certainly get into it. And Casey, you and I have hung out at events and I'm so excited we get to interview you on the podcast 'cause I'm gonna learn more about you that I don't know.

[00:02:55] Erum: And we're gonna hang out more, but for the listeners who've never been to Jen Space, can you paint a picture for us of what it's like? what would someone see make if they wandered into one of your workshops or the open lab?

[00:03:08] Casey: Yeah, when you first walk in, you will see biology equipment, whether you're familiar with laboratory. Or you have just seen them on TV or in pictures online, you might recognize centrifuges or incubators or bench tops or equipment that looks like it could move liquid around. we have hoods.

[00:03:29] Casey: we have these of sterile environments, so we have things that you would recognize it looks like a biology lab. But then you will notice that our benchtops are stainless steel kitchen benches. so it's the same equipment, the same surfaces that you would find in an industrial restaurant kitchen.

[00:03:43] Casey: they're perfect for science because you can sterilize them. You just spray them with isopropyl alcohol and you are good to go. but that was very, very intentional in the design of gen space. It is meant to feel not like your standard laboratory. It is meant to feel more familiar. It's meant to feel a little different.

[00:03:59] Casey: so you'll notice that, we also have really high end equipment. We have open Trons OT two liquid handling robots. some of your listeners may know that open trends emerged from gen space well over 10 years ago, and so they've been kind enough to donate those machines to us, for our members to use and for us to use in classes and workshops.

[00:04:17] Casey: We also have a next generation sequencing machine so we can sequence microbial genomes at the lab in house, which. It's incredible. I used, , RNA sequencing methods when I was doing my PhD, and I never did it myself. we sent out the samples to be sequenced by a facility. So the fact that we can do that at gen space is very, very cool.

[00:04:36] Casey: but then you will also notice that we have, plant incubators, DIY from styrofoam boxes. So there's just really this whole range of ways to do science. you'll see that, actually behind me, the picture of my background is touch tables full of biomaterial samples, like bacterial, bio cement forms made of mycelium, bioplastics in every shape, size, and texture.

[00:05:00] Casey: So, it really ends up feeling like a classroom, a design studio, and a lab all at the same time. We offer a range of programming that can achieve a really wide variety of outcomes and can reach a really wide variety of audiences. But it all makes sense when you consider the fact that all of our programming falls under a couple of pillars of what we think of experiential learning.

[00:05:23] Casey: And we're certainly not the owners of that term, but. What we think of as experiential learning is that in a class or a workshop, , you are going to learn as much as you need to know through lecture and discussion. But the rest of it, you are going to do the lab. You are going to edit a yeast genome using Crispr Cas nine gene editing.

[00:05:40] Casey: You are going to make a bioplastic. You are going to sequence your own DNA, you are going to transform bacteria into a different color. You won't just learn about what that means as a synthetic biology topic. then our research program, our lab membership program folks can join to pursue their own independent projects, pursue artistic practice.

[00:05:59] Casey: About 50% of our membership are artists and designers, and that has always been the case. This incredible emergent property of what it means when you create an accessible place for science. the rest is just networking. It's just this milieu when you're in a space and you don't know what you don't know, and you don't know who you're gonna run into.

[00:06:16] Casey: I mean, that's, as you two know, because you met at gen space, that is the magic of, just creating a space where people can mix, and talk to each other.

[00:06:24] Karl: That's so great. I know you, have said that, you're enamored with anything that has to do with brains, whether that's Mice or pizza rats or people or living things, which is so beautiful, but how does that shape the way that you approach programming and building community there at Gen Space, which is really a fantastic community.

[00:06:45] Casey: Hmm. Yeah. The reference to Pizza Rats is from when I was a postdoc. I studied urban Rats for a time, and so I will not turn your podcast into a soapbox about rats, but I.

[00:06:58] Karl: feel like we're seeing less of them these days for some reason. I don't know what it is.

[00:07:02] Casey: It's too hot outside this

[00:07:03] Casey: week. there are just so many different ways to be alive, I think is where that sentiment in my bio comes from. a nervous system, which I know the most about mammalian nervous systems, but. It is a physiological system that evolved to be responsive to the world around a living thing, It's essentially a system that mediates relationships and, communication. And there are just so many ways that can exist. And I think the more that I learned about the diversity within our own nervous systems, the brain has 86 billion neurons and that is just 10% of.

[00:07:39] Casey: All of the cells in the brain and in the human brain. And the other 90% of the cell types are just all of these different kinds of cells. And that's just within our own system. I recently finished a book about plant intelligence by an author named Zoe Schlanger. So, that sentiment comes from the fact that once you learn about biology, you have to approach it with humility and respect for all the different ways that. It can exist. I mean, there's also collective intelligence like mycelial networks and ant colonies. when you run a space that's dedicated to biology, education, and research, I try to transfer that humility for what exists in the world to all of the diversity that people can approach the study of biology with.

[00:08:19] Casey: So that's really where that comes from.

[00:08:22] Erum: Yeah, I mean your mind, your brain, there's a communication network inside of your brain. But obviously you're talking about, Mycelium connections across multiple organisms or individual organisms. And then also us, communities itself is an organism. And it's interesting because you can take this biological communication and apply it to.

[00:08:45] Erum: Science, communication and how to create a community and talk amongst ourselves and work amongst ourselves. I mean, I would love to learn more about, your role as an executive director, but also as a science communicator. 'cause you need to bring people with different science backgrounds into the community.

[00:09:01] Erum: You it's not forced to bring them, but you're going to welcome them into the community. So to make gen space attractive, you have to have different levels of science communication, but. how has that shifted since your days in the world of your you were a scientist and now you kind of bring it down a couple notches or transform somehow.

[00:09:20] Casey: Yeah, I think I've gone through a lot of different iterations and my personal science communication journey started with I am so passionate about science. I find so much joy in the process of doing it. everyone should know about this. it's so fun. It's amazing. All these things you can learn.

[00:09:39] Casey: And, that is obviously a very, not a nuanced way of looking at it. science has caused harm in some communities and people have been excluded from it. so you have to think about, What you know about science as a scientist is just one element of how science shows up in the world.

[00:09:57] Casey: And so someone's lived experience learning about something be affect being affected by a disorder or having a family member who is diagnosed with something. there are all of these lived experiences that can be brought to the table, and so I think that's what's really powerful about our small class sizes.

[00:10:14] Casey: we usually cap classes at about 15 people in that, size of a class between the lecturer, the instructor, and the learners really creates this, mutual learning experience where yes, someone is there to speak in front of the room and say, here's what you need to know about how genes turn on and off in yeast cells so that you can. Introduce an indigo pigment into this pathway if you so choose. but, it makes room for everyone else who is participating in that workshop to bring their lived experience to the table as expertise and contribute what they've heard about it, what they know about it, what they're thinking about it, and also just everything else they know, bring that to the table.

[00:10:48] Casey: So it's about. Platforming. And I think that's what I bring to my role as an executive director. that transition into this leadership position, , has felt natural in some ways because it's about knowing when to step up and step back. It's about knowing when to be, at the front of the room and saying, this is what I think we should be doing and this is what we are doing, and when to step back and listen, and make room for someone else's, experience and opinion.

[00:11:13] Karl: So speaking of, making room for, you know, people's different experiences, you end up working with a lot of people who don't really have a science background or have really any exposure to biology. which, As well. It's part of the reason why we do this podcast is to expose more people to what is happening in the world of biology as a technology.

[00:11:32] Karl: But what's something unexpected that maybe you've learned through, dealing with people who really don't have any science background, and what have you done to make it easier for them to explore biology?

[00:11:43] Casey: Is a great question. Perhaps unexpected outcome is that training to become a proficient scientist can happen in about three months.

[00:11:54] Karl: Crazy.

[00:11:55] Erum: nice.

[00:11:55] Casey: Yeah. So we, run a workforce development program called Break Into Biotech. That is. funded by the New York City Economic Development Corporation, and it really takes all of gen space's, those pillars of programming, hands-on classes and workshops, research, , mentorship, professional development, and you do not need to know everything about all of the technical skills that are required for a ventral, You need to know a basic language. You need to know how to communicate with a team in the lab. You need to know, how to troubleshoot. You need to know how to keep a good lab notebook. There are these like literacy that is somewhere between hard and soft skills, as we would maybe traditionally refer to them that, you can learn them pretty quickly.

[00:12:38] Casey: what's key to that is having the space to mess up. The way we structure the program is, about four to six weeks of classes and content and structured labs, where the materials are provided, everything is set up. You go through it and it's, intense. It's an intense program. we're in the middle of cohort four.

[00:12:53] Casey: We've served about 45 people since the beginning of last year when the program launched. they'll tell you it's pretty intense. It's a lot to take in. but then they start, these mentored research projects and these protocols are structured a little bit. the steps are laid out for the participants to walk through the process of doing research, but they are responsible for finding the materials.

[00:13:14] Casey: They're responsible for troubleshooting if something goes wrong, they're responsible for working with their mentors to understand what they still need to know. And it's that process, it's that troubleshooting, iterative thinking through the. Actual hands-on part of learning. that is what we're doing when we say we know how to do research.

[00:13:33] Casey: so you can create a curriculum that achieves that. I, I think that's what we're doing. And, it doesn't matter, what background you're coming from because, I'm not the first person to say this, but everyone is a scientist. We all know how to compare conditions. We all know how to test things.

[00:13:48] Casey: We all know how to take in evidence from the world around us. And so it's really not, as big of a jump when you can create the right setting for it.

[00:13:56] Erum: Yeah. I love that, You're bringing more people into the space. I participated in the Breaking into Biology program. was a part of a panel and I met some of the people that were participants in that program and they were incredible from different fields that have this, amazing curiosity and interest in applying biology to their disciplines.

[00:14:17] Erum: congratulations. 45 people. What an incredible resource for New Yorkers that. Want the structure to be able to learn about science and biology and how to do it right. I would love to know two things. One is you have this concept of radical accessibility, which gen space breaking into biotech is a part of that.

[00:14:35] Erum: I would love for you to unpack that a little bit and then I would love to know what are some projects the people that are enrolled in this program are doing? I'm just so curious because that's where the beauty comes from. That's where the creativity comes from when people come from other disciplines into the world of biology or taking biology into their discipline.

[00:14:52] Casey: Yeah, so. I think accessibility and radical accessibility is about accountability and responsiveness. So it's, how much can you break down the barrier between the researchers who are in the weeds and doing the work, which is a very intensive, time consuming, just consuming. How much can you make that process open to people who have different perspectives?

[00:15:19] Casey: And so when I think about accessibility, I think about our open plant community project, which has been running for seven, seven years, eight years at Gen Space, and is, inspired by and derived from, the open plant research center in the uk. professor Jim Hassel off, is the director of that.

[00:15:36] Casey: And it's about using plants, as. DIY biology tools, if you can grow plants at home and engineer them, you could grow anything. And so that group at Genspace has been working on engineering, the precursor molecule for human insulin into Marcia, which is the common Marcia Polymorpho, the Common Liver Work Plan. And they have actually successfully done that. They have confirmed the gene is there, they're working on confirming the level of, actual expression of the molecule, right now.

[00:16:07] Casey: I mean. Incredible achievement, but the idea of growing your own insulin at home someday, is really radical. It also raises a lot of governance questions about safety, about ethics, about how you can ensure that would be safe and distributed, equitably. , the fact that that group is meeting weekly, And the fact that anyone can come meet them, talk to them, I think that is a really important. Model for science that peer review and reception from the public or from users of recipients of biotechnology, bio technological developments is not happening after the fact, but happening during the process of doing research, I think, is really powerful.

[00:16:47] Casey: That's what I think of. I think of responsiveness, accountability. If someone is coming in with a different perspective or doubts or skepticism, how is the process of doing research going to respond to that? How are the researchers going to take that in? , to answer your second question about we call them, the breakers break into biotech participants.

[00:17:06] Casey: They, usually focus on, two different research projects. One is a synthetic biology protocol, which is a speculative, endeavor to engineer. A bacterium that causes bacterial leaf scorch, which is a plant pathogen that can affect oak trees. And this is because our, neighbors in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, where gen space is located, across the street is Greenwood Cemetery.

[00:17:28] Casey: This incredible public space, has some of the oldest oak trees. Around because it hasn't been touched in hundreds of years. , But some of the trees are, afflicted with this plant pathogen that can ultimately cause the tree to die. So we've had a couple of projects at Gen Space actually starting with our youth research internship program, , that the adults have, taken on in their, cohorts through break into biotech where, the idea is it would be a beyond containment, biotechnology.

[00:17:54] Casey: And so it's speculative at this stage, we would never, Actually release it, of course. But if you could edit , genes in that bacterium, they're biofilm causing genes. so if you can disrupt the biofilm using CRISPR Cas nine gene editing, which is what the project is trying to do, perhaps you could introduce a solution to, , bacterial leaf scorch.

[00:18:13] Casey: So that's the context, It's real world applications. It's very, very local. It has very real implications. If that was something that we were going to proceed with, again, speculative, But those are some examples of research projects that we work on

[00:18:26] Karl: you've been talking about, radical accessibility and also, things that are very local here in Brooklyn, but you also, attended the Ilmar 2025 conference a couple weeks ago and, would love to hear your take on that conference and the energy you felt from the next generation of leaders.

[00:18:45] Karl: what were they looking for? What kind of mission, are they driven by, , what kind of research, world building? What was interesting about that?

[00:18:55] Casey: Such an impactful experience getting to go to. That was such a gift. I'm such a nerd about science history, so to get to go to the Ilmar conference grounds 50 years after the first meeting in 1975, determined the biological safety levels. I mean, that was an incredible experience.

[00:19:16] Casey: very surreal. This time around, the organizers made an effort to make the median more inclusive and representative of the global biotechnology community. And so I was one of 60 next generation leaders who were invited to attend from all over the world. And this group, just. Incredible peers and scholars that I got to meet.

[00:19:38] Casey: first of all, I got to connect in person with community biology, colleagues that I only had previously spoken to online, from Bangladesh and Indonesia. that was incredible. shout out to Bora and, Janna, my friends. just getting to hang out with them was amazing. But the next generation leaders had a lot of demands.

[00:19:58] Casey: we had high expectations, I think, going in that, that this was a, 50 year commemoration of a pivotal moment in biotechnology, but also a problematic one. because the meeting in 1975 was not inclusive or representative. It was mostly. Male and white American and western European scientists who were making decisions for what has become a global field.

[00:20:20] Casey: we spent a lot of time, the next generation leaders, I wanna be careful not to speak for the whole group of us. There was, by no means a consensus on how everybody felt about it, but even in that, it was just an incredible experience and how you make decisions among such a.

[00:20:35] Casey: Varied group of backgrounds and perspectives. but I was just so energized by how much community I found in my peers who were among that group to call for mission-driven science. to call for, platforming other forms of expertise. I think my main takeaway And what I've always believed is just because you are a scientific expert in something does not grant you a monopoly on decision making of power around it.

[00:21:00] Casey: And it might not even mean that you should be on the stage. Maybe a trained communicator or facilitator should be the one directing the conversation and scientists will contribute what they know and make recommendations about how to best, engage the public. one perspective on how we could invite more collective input on the deployment of AI in biology, for example.

[00:21:23] Casey: how we would really, really solicit the input of. Communities and beyond containment bio technologies. That was actually a huge learning area for me, was learning about the work going on. if we are going to deploy synthetic biology as a tool for conservation or climate action, like how is that done responsibly?

[00:21:40] Casey: so just, really an impact. Very, very energizing. I am still sorting through how I feel about that.

[00:21:49] Erum: Wow.

[00:21:50] Casey: I wanna give some airtime to two, ENT treaties that arose. So one of the outcomes of the meeting was that attendees were invited to, author ENT treaties. a summary of what happened, a call to action, some kind of output.

[00:22:02] Casey: and then if the ENT treaties were endorsed by at least 30 participants, they would be published. And so those are now, the endorsed in treaties are now. Published and there was two, that I want to call attention to. The first is a call for, an indigenous biotechnology movement. the authors that I got to meet, Maria Alfi and Nwe Flores and Rolando Perez, among the other authors are calling for formal contractual partnerships with indigenous peoples and local communities.

[00:22:31] Casey: When bio technologies are. Derived from traditional ecological knowledge or plants and other organisms that belong to stewarded lands of indigenous peoples. What does it look like for profits to be shared, for the resources to be stewarded responsibly? I really encourage your listeners to engage with their writing.

[00:22:51] Casey: there's also an article in Nature Communications that they wrote about that. And the other one that I, played a small part in co-authoring, was about, the idea of a solidarity bio economy, which is commercializing and scaling, or maybe not scaling, maybe local production of, products and tech derived from biology.

[00:23:08] Casey: What does it look like for those to be governed financially and legally by alternative ownership enterprises? So employee. Profit sharing or employee trust structures, things like that. but my colleague, Leon Elcock is the mastermind behind that and has written a lot about it. really, really impressive, exciting.

[00:23:25] Casey: I just find myself , as we innovate in biotechnology, really yearning for innovation in how we share and collectively benefit from these things. So really inspired by those peers.

[00:23:38] Erum: Yeah. Wow. oh my gosh. sounds like you're still processing it. it's such a big event. I feel that way when I go to some of these events. I mean, sin by beta is there's so much innovation. and I'm always trying to process that and people that I meet, but this has gone so deep and global at the same time.

[00:23:55] Erum: and this idea of, ethics and biosecurity, it comes up a lot, especially when we talk about gen space. we had Dan Kin on founder and executive director early days, Beth Tuck came on the podcast, recommend people to go back and listen to that. And here's Casey and future of genspace.

[00:24:14] Casey: Yes, think I, yeah, I think I've told you both. This story about, it was like my fifth day of work after Beth, the former executive director and just an incredible human being. who, it was like, it's time for you to meet our FBI agent. I was like,

[00:24:38] Karl: Wow,

[00:24:38] Casey: Bring it

[00:24:39] Casey: on.

[00:24:39] Karl: someone assigned.

[00:24:41] Casey: Yeah, So, someone from our, regional New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania region, their weapons of mass destruction team likes to check in, and make sure that we're keeping things safe and that they really see us as a community partner. It's, actually a very, very cool relationship. Speaking of science, communication, speaking of humility, speaking of how you approach someone who has a different perspective, I think that's really embedded in our.

[00:25:04] Casey: Relationship with the FBI. they check in every so often and they see us as a community partner, so that if something were to happen, if something were to raise the hackles on the back of someone's neck at Genspace, we know who to call. We know to just send a quick email to say, Hey, this is going on.

[00:25:20] Casey: I mean, that really does not happen, but it's there. the safety practice is in place. And that's part of how we train people at genspace too, is if you see something, say something. what I just always emphasize to them and what I think is really cool about the way we build our programs and the way we train our membership is that. When we onboard people, we get a lot of face time. We get a lot of face time with the people who wanna work at genspace. we learn a lot about their interests. We learn a lot about what they wanna do. We make sure it's safe and feasible for our lab, and we make sure that they have the resources and potentially the connections that they need to learn effectively and feel supported.

[00:25:55] Casey: but it's also a gut check.

[00:25:56] Erum: Yeah. Yeah. is your FBI person still there? they get cut from the doge cuts. I mean, You better check in on them.

[00:26:03] Casey: I've actually been wondering that and I have not. We did get a new person actually, so.

[00:26:08] Erum: okay.

[00:26:11] Karl: So, gen space is at this point, I think something like 11, 12 years old. being on the board, we talk a lot about the future of, , gen space. One of the things. It's, news, , for the Genspace community is this idea of the Gotham Foundry. I was hoping you might be able to talk about that.

[00:26:28] Karl: Casey, tell us what it is. What's the vision for it? What's it gonna change, what does it mean for genspace?

[00:26:36] Casey: Absolutely. The Gotham Foundry is this incredible partnership between Columbia University Engineering, , CUNY Graduate Center's Advanced Science Research Center, and the Fashion Institute of Technology and Gen Space. And the idea is that we need radical investment in future materials. We need clothing that does not fill landfills.

[00:26:59] Casey: We need construction materials that are . Less carbon intensive. and that can be degraded or disposed of or reused or something other than turning into, I mean, I think construction waste is New York City's biggest, waste room, for instance. And so the Gotham Foundry is saying that New York City actually has these legacy industries fashion.

[00:27:21] Casey: Construction, I mean, our iconic built environment, the, restaurant industry, food and health is also part of the Gotham Foundry. there's all this embedded knowledge and expertise and historical, understanding of these industries. what would it look like to build a research and development ecosystem that was equipped to already work with those people, to translate that knowledge into a laboratory setting into.

[00:27:44] Casey: research and into development. so that's what the Gotham Foundry is all about, is, partnerships that enable that, and the ethos behind it. So that's also, being powered by the New York City Economic Development Corporation. This investment in this Gotham Foundry for the future of New York City's materials economy.

[00:28:01] Erum: Wow. Yeah. so many partnerships. that's gen space needing to not only help empower individuals, but also. These other companies that need to, what we like to say here at Messaging Lab is biolog, how are they biolog in a smart way, in a nice phased out way. so, I love this. so is it primarily partnerships or are they also looking to work with startups?

[00:28:26] Erum: Can startups tap into this? I'm just curious.

[00:28:29] Casey: Yeah, that's the idea so phase one is going to be for the next five years or so with programming, with events, workshops, thinking about how we can start to pull all the threads of this ecosystem together into one entity. how would those collaborations be structured, just as an aside, as Genspace grows?

[00:28:47] Casey: Something that I'm really well dedicated to by necessity, but also nerdy about right now is just how you scale organizations, right? create systems for. Collaboration. so that's, gonna be phase one for the next five years. And then, construction on a new Columbia engineering building is expected to begin in 2027 and be completed in 2030.

[00:29:07] Casey: And that is where the Gotham Foundry would be housed. And that is where the labs would be. there's gonna be facilities for characterization, synthesis, and fabrication. So the idea is that commercialization. Graduation of startups could happen within that as well as within the partner ecosystem of New York City, Because that's what's so beautiful about New York is that we have all of these partners across new lab, across Indie Bio, across NYU Bio labs. there's just so many touch points for someone to take an idea. Maybe it starts at gen space, they learn the hands-on skills they need to know, and then they travel through, the rest of this ecosystem to take it to fruition.

[00:29:45] Karl: it's so great. I think it's super welcome. I mean, one of the things that we say often is, if you're gonna launch a biotech company in New York is the place to do it because you have all the resources that you. You could possibly need. And then, the cliche, if you can make it here, we all know you can make it anywhere, but if you're able to succeed with biotech here and we can really build out this ecosystem, which we have seen just explode over the past 15 years.

[00:30:10] Karl: we serve as an example for the rest of the world in terms of what is possible. a lot of what we see with biotech, has to do with funding. There's a lot of disruption talked about. There's a lot of AI and its applications in biotech.

[00:30:23] Karl: I'm really looking forward to looking at those ENT treaties that came out of, and we'll link to those, but you're talking about something that's different. Gen space, at its core is different. It's grassroots, it's a nonprofit, it's open access. How do you keep yourself and how do you keep gen space focused on this idea of curiosity, when everybody might be more focused on outcomes.

[00:30:43] Casey: I think. Bio, the value proposition of it as similar to that of basic science. We spend a lot of time. Well, I don't, but there is a debate about the value of basic science and we just do not know what we don't know. And, every time you get into that conversation circle, you just come back to, we did not know what existed in the molecular makeup of a hot spring.

[00:31:11] Casey: Someone who was curious about why jellyfish glow there's just all of these poster child stories of discoveries that STEM from curiosity. I think that is what community biology is all about. it's the culture of. Curiosity. It's how are you creating a space that people not only can be in, but want to be in because their ideas are going to be welcomed and celebrated and taken seriously no matter where they're coming from.

[00:31:36] Casey: so it's that ethos. I keep alluding to all of the different outcomes that, a program our programs can deliver. but it really just comes down to, starting with. The culture of inclusivity and celebrating, curiosity and then seeing what can go from there rather

[00:31:52] Casey: than being so, outcome driven from the get go.

[00:31:55] Casey: it's focusing on those pillars of learning, hands on, talking to people.

[00:32:01] Karl: Okay. Casey, I have a really important question because today we have a very powerful idea partner, We are all leveraging ai. We get very curious, we go down these rabbit holes and it's getting smarter, and it's giving us advice and telling us where to get resources. Have people in the gen space community.

[00:32:19] Erum: Come to you with, protocols from ai? Or have they come up with some radical ideas and they're like, okay, that's strange. It's safe, but doable. Can you give us some specific stories a of how AI has played into this, culture and, development of bio products and how it's been creating, some really crazy ideas that you just wanna share.

[00:32:40] Casey: That's a great question.

[00:32:41] Casey: AI can be a really important tool for learning science. where you might have had to spend a bunch of time googling how to troubleshoot something, whenever we teach troubleshooting in the lab, you go to ResearchGate, you go to Reddit, you go to YouTube, you go to all of the places where there's a discussion forum about a very specific little thing that you might not be noticing that someone might have seen before.

[00:33:04] Casey: having. AI at your disposal to help you do that really expedites the process. And if you can learn to prompt it in the right way, you can use it to age your learning. the tricky part is about AI when you're learning in the lab, is that you can ask it all of the different ways to do something and it will tell you regardless of how feasible they are.

[00:33:26] Casey: if you want to make a cosmetic product out of compounds derived from seaweed or something like that, there are lots of ways you can isolate those proteins. Some of them might involve equipment that you would simply never use outside of a highly equipped facility. there was one example recently where a student came forward and was sharing protocols, to do this, to get, compounds out of seaweed.

[00:33:48] Casey: And one of the protocols involved radiation. And, this person proposed it to me as if it was, look at all these options. And it was like, you cannot, work with radiation.

[00:33:57] Karl: Sure, we've got lots of ray names sitting around Brooklyn. Easy for everyone to access. We don't,

[00:34:03] Casey: yeah. Yeah, right. No problem. and that is why I am so passionate about this hands-on portion. There is a physicality to doing science, and that does not change even when you can automate it, you can automate certain things, but it's still a machine that's going to be doing it for you.

[00:34:20] Casey: That has to operate in certain parameters of safety and logistics. Power space, whatever it is. And so if you don't understand the physicality of what you're doing, AI is not going to help you. It might actually hurt you if you're learning, if you do understand how to do something with your hands, what it will take, what the equipment looks like then AI is this incredible tool we just hosted.

[00:34:43] Casey: Dr. Kennedy McDaniel Bay, who is an expert in curriculum development and Brilliant person who's thinking about automation and the relationship between hardware, software, and machine learning right now. And she came for a talk the other night at genspace and I think, she was telling the audience that we're in this moment where, Probably some really incredible developments are going to happen. but only if you understand and respect the modality of each of those pillars, that's what I'm thinking about AI right now. It is this powerful tool, but you have to learn it, learn to use it, just like you have to learn all the other tools that are available to you in a biology lab.

[00:35:20] Karl: Yeah. I think that's totally right. first of all, Iran, that was a great question in case the. Was a fantastic answer.

[00:35:25] Erum: Thank you.

[00:35:27] Karl: so Casey, as we wind down the interview, you work at this intersection of art science, storytelling. You're trained as a scientist, you run this community lab.

[00:35:36] Karl: How do all these elements come together in your life and at Gen

[00:35:39] Karl: space?

[00:35:40] Casey: That's such a good question. They're just different toolkits, They're all powerful in their own right sciences. Tools are to say, let's isolate these variables. let's determine the root cause of what's going on here. that is done through experimental design and experimental thinking.

[00:36:00] Casey: And that is one way of looking at things. And it is inherently, limiting. it's designed to be, it's designed to isolate. Certain outcomes so that you can understand mechanistically what is going on. and it's about generating numbers. It's about generating data, storytelling, which is something I'm very passionate about.

[00:36:15] Casey: I, used to produce a neuroscience storytelling show that was inspired by the Story Collider when I was in graduate school. and I, like to tell stories as a hobby, at Caveat sometimes, or do science comedy

[00:36:26] Erum: Oh, yes, I wanna talk about that. But let's put a pin in it. You continue this question.

[00:36:32] Casey: Storytelling is not about numbers at all. I mean, we are wired to respond and with empathy, So storytelling is about using emotion to. convey something that's an inherently different tool than what science is trying to do.

[00:36:48] Casey: And art, I mean, I'm not going to endeavor on your podcast to say what art is, but in my view, art is one of the things that's about, and especially bio art and the way I see it. manifest at genspace. it's about relationships and it's about holding complexity and it's about celebrating things.

[00:37:04] Casey: And it is not about outcome, it's about craft, it's about process, it's about experience. again, totally different suite of tools. when you can put all of those things together, it's really just about elevating different ways of understanding the world. Science is just one way of looking at and understanding the world.

[00:37:21] Casey: it's one that I really love because I'm a scientist. I will always love it. But, I think that is The secret sauce behind gen space and behind community biology is that it doesn't just make space for other ways of knowing about the world. It actually elevates them and asks how all of these different perspectives can inform each other.

[00:37:40] Erum: Yeah. Yeah, that's incredible answer. I mean, There's a culmination of different tools as you're saying, and , it's so exciting to see how these play out. and you mentioned emotion as storytelling. You also mentioned comedy. Lizette, who's, our associate, working with us at Messaging Lab, who, you know from, the world of academia.

[00:37:58] Erum: mentioned that you did do some standup at Caveat, so caveat is a venue in New York City, , where they have standup comedy Carl and I went to a trivia comedy science night with our friend Alex Rose of Cascade, and a few other friends and , the friend that you had introduced us to, who runs Facts Machine, was hosting it it was so hilarious.

[00:38:19] Erum: it was so good. I had a self-actualization moment because they shared a trivia fact that there was this time back in the day. When the X files was really big and there was this surge of women going into stem, and that was when I went into STEM and it was called the Scully Effect, and I was like.

[00:38:41] Erum: I'm a statistic.

[00:38:42] Erum: It's just me.

[00:38:43] Erum: I, experienced the Scully effect and it happened because of fax machine. Yeah. We were all affected. So, are you doing any standup anytime soon? I would love to come see you do that. That's my favorite way of experiencing science is to comedy.

[00:38:59] Casey: And yeah, Noah Verson, one of the three hosts of Facts Machine. I think I heard him say this most recently, that it's about joy, right? That's why comedy is so delightful. And, that. why it's so powerful as a science communication mechanism. I don't have any plans to do it anytime soon.

[00:39:16] Casey: I was just on fax machine in May, telling a synthetic biology story, the Blue Rose Challenge about trying to engineer a blue rose. So that was when I did it most recently. And then I was on, last year talking about, urban rats, my wild rats, which is my favorite thing.

[00:39:34] Erum: So much, good content coming from rats, I'm sure. , And also comedy is the highest form of intelligence. So we think it's science, we think it's technology. No, no, no, no. It's comedy. So if you can get to that. Echelon, which you have. it's so great. I love that . We'll have to have you come on and, do a, bit, I mean, I wish I thought about this sooner and we would have a whole segment of you doing some standup on the pod, we'll get there.

[00:39:59] Casey: so fun. It's a deal.

[00:40:02] Erum: But yes. Excellent. Cool. Carl, anything else we're getting at time?

[00:40:08] Karl: No, we're getting at time. I I was hoping, Casey, you might, close us out by telling us, if resources are unlimited, what would genspace look like? What would you do?

[00:40:17] Casey: Such a good question. One project that I would love to see happen that I have been thinking about for a really long time, even long before 23 and me went bankrupt recently, is this idea of what it, what would it mean for individuals to own their own genetic data and could community biology be a mechanism for that?

[00:40:38] Casey: I think that introduces some really complicated governance questions about storing and managing the data. you also sacrifice if. It is not something that's collective or pooled into a dataset. What does it mean to understand genetics on a population level? Is that something that people could opt into if they wanted to?

[00:40:54] Casey: I think someone was telling me recently that there actually is an instance of this in a Scandinavian country. I wanna say Denmark, but I am not totally sure, of citizens opting in as a regular civic responsibility to contributing their genetics to, a nationwide, data set. it might be

[00:41:09] Casey: Iceland,

[00:41:10] Casey: Okay. what would that look like? how would it work? I, community biology a solution for that? Could there be a team of ethicists and medical professionals embedded in that process? but what would it mean? , To not have to give up the rights to your genetic information in order to understand your ancestry?

[00:41:27] Casey: and what it means for your health. that was something that I always was thinking about the direct to consumer genetic testing market. I think we just watched it live a lifecycle.

[00:41:36] Karl: Yeah,

[00:41:38] Karl: yeah. Unfortunately the data is not dead, we don't know what that next episode is gonna look

[00:41:43] Karl: like.

[00:41:43] Erum: between three and me,

[00:41:44] Karl: Yeah.

[00:41:44] Erum: I heard that she bought it back, so we'll see. Because she sold it to Regeneron and bought it back. So the saga continues, so we'll have to see what happens. and there are people working on it, in terms of an open source protocol to upload your, genome there and then they would tokenize it and then people can buy it.

[00:42:03] Erum: and there's actually a company in New York that's doing it, so we can definitely dig into that. But I am curious, Casey, can I, sequence my whole genome at genspace? Could I do that there?

[00:42:12] Casey: You cannot, our sequencing machine is not powerful enough to sequence a human genome, but you could sequence little parts if you chose.

[00:42:19] Karl: Can we use the equipment at genspace to identify the microbes that live on and fungi that live on my skin?

[00:42:26] Casey: Yes, yes, we can. You can absolutely do that at Gen Space.

[00:42:31] Erum: Okay. All right. We're getting somewhere now. We know the breath. Okay. Not whole genome sequencing, but microbial genome sequencing. So we're, getting there and hey, if anyone's out there, you have some pockets donate to gen space. If you have a very powerful sequencing machine, please donate that to gen space so I can sequence my whole genome and start doing analysis on that.

[00:42:52] Erum: But, this has been so great. So happy to finally have you on, and we'll have you on again and again. You're just such important person in this community, in biology. It's not just about entrepreneurship and making money. It's about making biology more accessible to all, and doing some creative things with it.

[00:43:11] Erum: So Casey, thank you so much for joining us on the GR Everything podcast.

[00:43:15] Casey: Thank you so much, rum. Thank you, Carl. This was such a

[00:43:18] Casey: joy. Really appreciate you having me on.

[00:43:20] Karl: Yeah, thank you.