About Jason Bobe

Jason Bobe serves as the Executive Director of PersonalGenomes.org and Director of Community for the Personal Genome Project based out of George Church’s lab at Harvard Medical School. The Personal Genome Project seeks to encourage the thoughtful development of personal genomics technology and practices by building frameworks for prototyping and evaluation at increasing scales.

Jason is co-founder of DIYbio.org, an organization that aims to help make biology a worthwhile pursuit for citizen scientists and amateur biologists. DIYbio is fast becoming the organizational hub for amateur biologists worldwide, uniting the movement’s participants through its website, online forums, blog and local chapters.

He has also worked as a Business Development Consultant for OpenWetWare.org, as Director of Business Development at DNA Direct, and as an independent consultant. He has attended both the University of Colorado at Boulder and the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. He is interested in how emerging biotechnologies and the web are redefining the relationships between scientific research communities, communities from the general public, and the network of actors in-between.

Articles, Book Chapters:

Ball MP, Thakuria JV, Zaranek AW, Clegg T, Rosenbaum AM, Wu X, Angrist M, Bhak J, Bobe J, Callow M, Cano C, Chou MF, Chung WK, Douglas SM, Estep P, Gore A, Hulick P, Labarga A, Lee J, Lunshof J, Kim BC, Kim JI, Li Z, Murray MF, Nilsen GB, Peters B, Raman AM, Reinhoff HY, Robasky K, Wheeler M, Vandewege W, Vorhaus D, Yang JL, Yang L, Aach J, Ashley EA, Drmanac R, Kim SJ, Li JB, Peshkin L, Seidman CE, Seo JS, Zhang K, Rehm HL, Church GM (2012) A Public Resource Facilitating Clinical Use of Genomes. PNAS July 24, 2012 vol. 109 no. 30 11920-11927. (link)
Jeantine Lunshof, Jason Bobe, John Aach, Misha Angrist, Joseph Thakuria, Daniel Vorhaus, Margret Hoehe, George Church. “Personal genomes in progress: From the Human Genome Project to the Personal Genome Project.” Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience. 12(1):47-60, 2010. Pubmed.
Jason Bobe. “To the moon: In support of the genomic astronauts who will take us there.” Genomics Law Report. Fall 2009. Link or PDF.
Jason Bobe. “Bioweathermap: Who wants to be a molecular meteorologist?” in DIY :: HCI — A Showcase of Methods, Communities and Values. Edited by Leah Buechley, Eric Paulos, Daniela Rosner, Amanda Williams, Jayne Vidheecharoen. Lulu Press, 2009. Info.

A few notable talks:

“DIYbio: extraordinary biotechnologies for everyday life.” Small is the New Big: Designing Our Future at the Nanoscale, Humanscale, and Beyond. IDEAS Series | Autodesk Gallery at One Market | San Francisco, California March 27-29, 2012. (video)
“Open Consent Frameworks for Public Genomics” Keystone Symposia. Complex Traits: Genomics and Computational Approaches. Breckenridge, CO. February 20-25, 2012.
“Do It Yourself Biology” Gaite Lyrique in Paris, November 2011.
“BioWeatherMap” Presented at Design Night at the Autodesk Gallery in San Francisco. Sept 15, 2011.
“DIYbio: Origin, Activities & Scenarios for the Future.” Presented to the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. Philadelphia. September 14, 2010. (Watch, meeting agenda)
“BioSecurity: How synthetic biology is changing the way we look at biology and biological threats.” The Synthetic Biology Project. Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. March 11, 2010. Info or Webcast.
“Building Bridges Around Building Genomes” Synthetic Genomics Workshop. Invited panelist. San Francisco, Aug 4-5 2009.
“Health 2.0, From Clinics to Clicks: Shifting Power Online”. Invited panelist. TieCon East, May 2008.
“Instrumenting the medical enterprise for discovery: dissolving the barriers between clinical care and research” Panel moderator. First AMIA summit on translational bioinformatics, March 2008.
“What the future holds” Invited speaker. Personalized medicine: breaking barriers and achieving results, presented by Nixon Peabody, Harvard Medical School. October 11, 2007.
“Citizen Science and Patient Communities on the Web.” Invited speaker. New Horizons in Internet Site Development, Dolan DNA Learning Center, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, October 2006.
“Digital Health – What’s in the Future” Panelist. Moderated by Andy Kessler (author, The End of Medicine), Presented by Commonwealth Club of Silicon Valley, Computer History Museum, September 2006.

Select Press, TV, radio:

Carolyn Johnson. “Is it safe to dump this down the drain? Ask a biosafety expert” Boston Globe. Jan 17, 2013. (link)
Adrienne Burke. “Citizen Science Takes Off: Could Community Labs Hatch the Next Generation of Bio Innovators?” Forbes. Oct 25, 2011.
Daniel Grushkin. “Try this at home. Growing movement of genetic tinkerers set to usher in biotech revolution” The Daily. Oct 24, 2011.
“Do-It-Yourself Biology” The Kojo Nnamdi Show. March 22, 2011.
Alex Wright. Managing Scientific Inquiry in a Laboratory the Size of the Web. NYTimes. December 28, 2010.
Jed Lipinski. Turning Geek into Chic. NYTimes. December 19, 2010.
Heidi Ledford. Garage biotech: Life hackers. Amateur hobbyists are creating home-brew molecular-biology labs, but can they ferment a revolution? Nature 467, 650-652 (2010) | doi:10.1038/467650a (Published online 6 October 2010). Read now.
“Our Need for Genomes.” BioTech Nation. Interviewed by Moira Gunn and David Ewing Duncan. Recorded on August 2, 2010.(listen)
“Responsible Science for Do-It-Yourself Biology.” PR-Newswire, June 29, 2010. (link) Announcement for new project working with Woodrow Wilson Center.
“Taking Biological Research Out of the Laboratory.” NPR’s All Things Considered, interviewed by Guy Raz. Aired December 27, 2009. Listen.
Howard Wolinsky. “Kitchen biology.” EMBO reports 10, 683 - 685 (July 2009).
Prashant Nair. “Straight talk with…Mac Cowell and Jason Bobe.” Nature Medicine 15, 230-231 (1 March 2009)
Phil McKenna, “Rise of the garage genome hackers.” New Scientist. 07 January 2009.
News Hour with Jim Lehrer, “Students, Scientists Build Biological Machines.” Aired December 30, 2008.
Carolyn Y. Johnson, “Accessible Science: Hackers aim to make biology household practice.” Boston Globe. September 15, 2008.

Art exhibits:

“BioWeatherMap” An exhibit at the Autodesk Gallery in San Francisco and showcased at TEDGlobal 2011.
“X,Y,Z and U.” League of Imaginary Scientists. Outpost for Contemporary Art, June 20, 2009.

Conferences I have (co)organized:

GET Conference at Harvard Medical School. April 25, 2012.
DiYbio Continental Congress, North America. Held in San Francisco, 2011.
DiYbio Continental Congress, Europe. Held at the London School of Economics, 2011.
Genomes, Environments, Traits (GET) Conference. April 27, 2010 in Boston.

Twitter: @jasonbobe

I live in San Francisco, CA and spend a lot of time in Boston. All opinions expressed on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of employers, colleagues, or anyone significant.

Recently Written

Popular Posts

Archives

Looking for the PGP?

About this blog

Even if you didn't know it before this moment, getting a personal copy of your genome sequence is a lifestyle choice that you may want to consider.

So are you going to take the personal genomics plunge? How are you going to decide? What are the issues? How are other people making this decision? Who is doing interesting work relevant to these choices? By the way, what is relevant? These are some of the issues this blog is intended to address.