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Apply Now: AMRI Summer 2014 Fellowships

We have an open call for Summer 2014 Fellowships at Advanced Manufacturing Research Institute (AMRI), hosted at Rice University in the department of Bioengineering.

We are soliciting applications for the following projects:

Project 1: e-NABLE 3D Printed Prosthetic Devices

In collaboration with the worldwide e-NABLE group, and Gloria Gogola, M.D. at Shriners Hospital for Children, Fellows will aid in the design, 3D printing, testing, and refinement of open-source prosthetic hand and finger designs. This unique fellowship will bring 3D printing into the clinical setting, working closely with Dr. Gogola and her patients in need.

Project 2: Selective Laser Sintering (SLS)

Fellows will augment and refine the open SLS design pioneered by Andreas Bastian last year. SLS machines typically cost $50k or more, we built ours for under $15k. This year we will focus on powder manufacturing and powder handling, as well as characterization of SLS parts via scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and mechanical testing.

Project 3: OLED 3D Photolithography of Living Tissues

Related to Anderson Ta’s exciting digital light projection (DLP) photolithography last year, Fellows will investigate and program organic light emitting diode (OLED) screens as a light source for 3D photolithographic printing of living tissues. Chemical functionalization of glass surfaces will also be investigated to passivate the screen surface and aid in detachment and 3D printing from the light source surface.

Project 4: Open Source Ink Jet Printing of Bacteria

A continuation of Steve Kelly’s inkshield augmentation of RepRap motherboards to print living bacteria, Fellows will investigate fluid mechanics, python scripting, and multicolor printing to create interacting bacterial colonies on top of and within agar gels. Fellows will also learn how to insert genes of interest into bacterial colonies for protein production. Steve’s 2013 AMRI Presentation is available here.

Check out all the details, and be sure to apply by May 15th:
http://amrinstitute.org

Questions can be directed to amri@rice.edu.

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Hack the sky, man! Hive76 helps sky write a message over Eraserhood

When I saw  this posterWrite Sky poster on the right in the lobby of our studio building I thought it looked neat, but it wasn’t until the mastermind Dave Kyu visited that Hive76 was convinced to participate in WriteSky. Well, he mostly convinced me, as I ended up as the only contributor, but I am glad that Hive76 was able to host the collaboration meeting with our fellow group, artists that work in 319 N 11th St, members of Grizzly Grizzly and Tiger Strikes Asteroid.

We met on one Wednesday open house to figure out exactly what message we would write over our neighborhood. I don’t have a lot of history collaborating with other artists, but after the experience I had using Dave’s process and the smart 319 Artists Mary Smull, Jacque Liu, Sarah Kate Burgess, and Jaime Alvarez, I am looking forward to my next collaboration. It was a pleasure brainstorming, discussing, and compromising to come up with what we think is the perfect sentiment to be written in the sky for a few minutes. What message is that?Ah, but ours and the two other collaborative groups’ messages are secret up until the actual writing. We want it to be a surprise.

If you can make it this Saturday, please come to The Eraserhood at 11:30am and look up. Weather permitting, you’ll see three wonderful messages written in vaporized canola oil over the Philadelphia skyline. It will be visible for about 15 miles, but the best view will be directly underneath. If you see the writing in the sky, tag it with #WriteSky and it will appear on the page: http://writesky.com/photos/

Keep looking up!