Bad Blood is a story of an evil biotech CEO, Elizabeth Holmes from Theranos. Holmes has recently been the subject of a documentary on HBO (The Inventor). I haven't seen the documentary but I really liked the book and highly recommend it.
Analytical Chemistry at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab - We have a new photo diary describing Kenton Chung's experience working in analytical chemistry lab. Kenton shows that a certificate in Stem Cell Technology from CCSF prepares you for quite a bit!
Learn about the biotech industry at Biotech-Careers.org. We have some new features for finding out what companies do.
Who doesn't get excited about watching Cell Culture Videos? Grab some popcorn and pull up a chair. Millipore Sigma has videos on cell line validation, cryopreservation, and more.
5th Maryland Collegiate Stem Conference If you're on the East coast, be sure you register this weekend for the 5th Maryland Collegiate STEM Conference at Baltimore City Community College, April 27th. I hope to see you there!
ASMCUE - don't forget, early bird registration for the ASMCUE conference ends soon. Register today!
Enjoy!
Sandra Porter, PhD
PI, A Bridge to Bio-Link's Future, DUE 1764225
We all want to think that our students will get jobs at great companies, enjoy their work, help cure cancer, and find ways to save the world.
But not all employers are great. Some are even crooks. How do we prepare them for companies like that?
Bad Blood shares the stories of a few technicians who, while they may not have saved the world, they saved quite a few people from the fraudulent medical device developed and sold by Theranos. Although Theranos' story embodies some of our worst nightmares, the story is really interesting and I couldn't put it down. Your students will like it too.
Kenton Chung, from the Bio-Link program at City College of San Francisco, describes his experience working in the Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts Development Unit at Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory.
Learn about Kenton's experience, with processing samples in the analytical chemistry lab, in his photo diary at Biotech-Careers.org.
A recent article by Todd Smith, PhD, Bio-Link, Digital World Biology, describes a new feature at Biotech-Careers.org that allows you to search for companies more easily by their business area or group companies by a related area.
These abilities are helpful because you can see where companies are located and what they do. This is great information for advising students and planning curricula.
For some popular areas, we created cards that link all the companies within a broader category (above). Click a card and you can see all the companies with business related to Biomedical Devices, Ag-Biotech, Genomics, Immunology, or Biotech Software.
If you scroll to the bottom of a page at Biotech-Careers.org and click "Select Core Activities" you can select and search by any of 400 terms used as keywords for the companies.
Help sponsor the site and your company, college, or grant project will be shown on the most pertinent page.
Everything you want to know about cell culture (well, maybe not everything but certainly a lot)! If you are thinking about cell culture work, or already doing it but want to know more, take a look at Beth Stewart's Bio-Link Blog about Millipore Sigma's free and informative Cell Culture Videos!
A college-run incubator provides many advantages. Colleges can ask prospective tenants to apply for space and require their tenant companies to make a commitment to teaching or providing internships to community college students. The ACC Bioincubator has had 40 companies apply already, allowing them to be selective. When a college builds an incubator, it increases the amount of lab space for new companies and establishes the college as a bona fide partner to the local biotech industry.
This FREE Gene Editing Workshop will be presented in partnership by Delaware Technical Community College and the Gene Editing Institute at Helen F. Graham Cancer Center and Research Institute, part of Christiana Care Health Services. Delaware Tech will be hosting a two-day workshop April 5-6, 2019 focused on the exciting and rapidly developing area of CRISPR-based gene editing.
Maryland Collegiate STEM Conference (MCSC) is a collaborative effort of community colleges in Maryland to shine a spotlight on STEM and related areas. The Conference provides students, faculty, and staff with a common platform for professional development, showcasing undergraduate research work, creating STEM awareness, and networking. Partners from high schools and four-year colleges are encouraged to attend. The Conference will take place on April 27th, 2019 at Baltimore City Community College.
The Bio-Link program at St. Louis Community College (STLCC) is one of the few community college biotech programs to have a service lab in an incubator and one of the first Bio-Link programs to set up a Contract Service Organization (CSO) .
This July, you'll have a chance to tour STLCC's BRDG Park lab and the Danforth Center for Plant Sciences at Missouri Biotech Day in St. Louis.
Missouri Biotech Day will feature talks by High School STEM teachers, Biotech program alumni, and industry representatives. There will also be poster sessions for students and faculty.
Funding for this project has been provided through the National Science Foundation's Advanced Technology Education Program, DUE 1764225.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation, Bio-Link, or its partners.
