Is there any one who is interested in biology / biohacking?
Im about to setup a little lab at home for algae cultures. Also looking to test my own blood - for shits and giggles 
Just got a microscope (1000x oil)
-clean space
-still air
-incubation fridge
-flow hood would be siick
But if people are keen, maybe we could re-purpose that unused room which is just storing drinks
Not looking for negative feed back
When I first signed up with HSBNE I was really heavily into the idea of a biohacking space like BioCurious, particularly relating to making practical use of organisms which had bioluminescence. Time, money and other projects got in the way, but I think it would be cool if something like that was to eventuate in Brisbane.
At the moment my interest in biohacking relates to my own deranged metabolism, nutrigenomics and nutrition so I can’t see myself finding much use for a dedicated biolab at HSBNE.
Unfortunately our first foray into running a science/chem lab at HSBNE was at best abortive and was largely due to the area being poorly managed. With no proper storage or segregation, poor labelling, beer bottles being used for storage. In the end we had to dispose of a bunch of unlabelled bottles and clear out the space which was a frustrating experience.
Spaces like BioCurious have only been largely successful due to the spaces being run by very science and lab focused volunteer organisations that are across the breadth of the rigor required with regards to safety and containment.
Back in July 2015 we had a visit from the OGTR (Office of the Gene Technology Regulator) who are the government department charged with making sure backyard scientists aren’t making genetically modified armies to take over the world.
They gave some good advice at the time and I think they would form a good basis of things we’d need to do to ensure such a space at HSBNE was safe and successful compared to the last time.
This included:
TLDR: If a group of people got together to do biohacking at HSBNE in a safe, sustainable and responsible way I’d be thrilled, but IMHO we need to go about it properly and not half or full-ass it.
As for where to put such a lab, I think we’d be better off outfitting a 10-20ft container on site as it’d be a much more controllable environment. Additionally we are limited on space and whilst that storage room might be usable for purposes we’d end up putting similar amounts of effort in finding all of the things stored in there a new home and renovating it to become a usable clean space as we would renovating the inside of a container.
I’m looking forward to seeing if and when this eventuates as citizen science is hot and shouldn’t just be limited to universities.
We’ve also got the Qld Biohacking Group (which I think you know about). Would be great to poke them to see how things are going in this space. There’s lots of citizen science grants going at the moment.