Team:Ionis Paris/Working at La Paillasse
The iGEM IONIS had the great opportunity to work at La Paillasse, a biohacker space situated in Paris. It is a community laboratory open to everyone who want to try biology lab science. La Paillasse was created with the open source philosophy to support new form of innovation in the field of biology.
La Paillasse aims to bring people from different backgrounds and let new ideas appear from this multidisciplinary combination.
The community of La Paillasse is composed of people from diverse background, from engineers to philosophers through designers, students and sociologists. However all those people are coming with the same purpose: to find an open space and realize their project. Several start-ups have been created at La Paillasse, such as Meiso (sensory isolation chambers), the FlyLab (innovative drones), Pili (ink making from modified bacteria).
It is in this multidisciplinary environment that our team have been evolved for several months. This environment emphasized the importance of a multidisciplinary approach, it was important for us to listen to the comments of non-biologists to have another point of view on our project application and limitation. La Paillasse was the perfect place to carry out Quantifly. We had great time sharing informations with persons working in the Fly Lab and attending the conferences organized by La Paillasse.
Finally our team worked closely to the UMPC iGEM team, impact. We shared knowledge and got an external perspective on our project and lab techniques. We helped each other by sharing lab materials when needed.
Working at La Paillasse gave us the opportunity to present our project to the many people that came visiting this buzzing place. We were pleased to share our iGEM experience with people from many organizations: L'Oréal, ENGIE as well as the French Secretary of State for Higher Education and Research, Thierry Mandon.
