AfroBiotech

3 Jan

What up good people? This is the official Bluesky home of AfroBiotech, spun out of the ABT conference series founded by @drkhaynes. We read the papers and the room. We call out bad biotech design and $$$ gatekeepers. We give props to scientists doing it right. We keep it real over here.

Six major leaders in biotech are calling out Vivek Ramaswamy (biotech entrepreneur) for that disgusting ad against Amy Acton, his political opponent. Dr. Ted Love, a 2025 AfroBiotech keynote speaker is a co-signer. #WeDoNotDoThatHere #biotech #accountability

Dr. Karmella Haynes@drkhaynes.bsky.social

Posted on LinkedIn; six leaders in biotech, the industry where Vivek Ramaswamy made his name, are calling on him to pull his ad challenging Amy Acton’s account of childhood sexual abuse, stop funding it, and apologize to her and her family. Five are former BIO chairs.

Thank you @devawo.bsky.social for speaking up for restorative science, and against predatory technology!

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The collection “From Black Print Culture to Digital Blackness” just dropped in the Black History Month Bulletin! 16 articles & 11 lesson plans spanning law, media, education, engineering, & sciences. ABT’s “Who Gets to Engineer Life? Biotechnology, Power, and Participation” is included.

“Who Gets to Engineer Life” 🧬 has something for @blackinbiophys, @blackinengineering, and @blackinmicrobiology too! We discuss how biotech, from environmental remediation to biomedical devices and engineered cell systems, is shaped by who participates and whose needs are considered in design.

In “Who Gets to Engineer Life?” we highlight work developing technologies to measure brain activity across a wider range of hair textures and skin tones, with a shout-out to Jasmine Kwasa and colleagues for their work on more equitable EEG technology. @blackinneuro.bsky.social

Search the title “From Black Print Culture to Digital Blackness” at muse.jhu.edu

muse.jhu.eduProject MUSE

uvahealth.comNanotechnology IDs New Target for Treating Glaucoma

4 Sept

To watch: UVA team led by Dr. Evan Scott used targeted nanotechnology to probe fluid drainage in the eye; id’ed Prox1 as a potential gene therapy target for glaucoma. Great example of nanotech as a tool for discovery & therapeutic innovation. #AfroBiotech #Nanotech www.uvahealth.com/news/nanotec...

3 Sept

I hear that AfroBiotech might be headed to New Orleans in 2027 👀. And maybe at a certain university with a legendary history of educating Black scientists and health professionals 👀 👀. Nothing official yet, but we’re talking. #AfroBiotech2027

youtube.comProfessor turns childhood Double Dutch idea into a real machineAs a child, engineering professor Tahira Reid Smith sketched a machine that could turn Double Dutch skipping ropes without human help for a school assignment. Forty years later, she's brought her…

11 Aug

I need a double Dutch machine in every Planet Fitness, LA Fitness, and Orange Theory. And this brilliant engineer needs to get paid for all of them.

Black in Engineering@blackinengineering.bsky.social

This article from Reuters reminds us to never give up on our dreams. It breaks down the story of Tahira Reid Smith's path from a childhood idea to a world-renowned invention. It also discusses the impact that the invention has on the jumping community in the Bronx. www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKUL...

AfroBiotech reposted

Dr. Karmella Haynes

@drkhaynes.bsky.social

9 May

It is my honor to “hood” two STEM PhDs, Cancer Biology (left) and Biomedical Engineering (right), today at the #EmoryCommencement ceremony. As a first-gen URM PhD myself it is especially exciting to bestow this hard-earned title to two black women scientists #blackinSTEM

11 Apr

Captain Victor Glover, yes you did that! 🚀 🙌🏾 And in the same week Dr. Josephine Allen and colleagues dropped this fire article in NPJ Microgravity on supporting inclusive space travel biomedical research!!! 🤩 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

9 Feb

Imagine downloading every single “one weird thing your doctor doesn’t want you to know” click bait ad from the internet, loading it into an android wearing a suit, and putting it in charge of public health policy #MAHA

9 Feb

For the record, we don’t support MAHA. One that note, what in universe was that MAGA/Tyson #superbowl ad? MAHA’s whole schtick is intellectual laziness.

10 Jan

9 Jan

Inclusive science fills important gaps in knowledge and technology. Therefore, inclusive science is real gold-standard science. I said what I said. #illegalDEI #DEI #STEM #biotech

en.wikipedia.orgGeorge Washington Carver - Wikipedia

5 Jan

Today is #GeorgeWashingtonCarver Day (est. 1953). Carver’s work is deeper than “100’s of inventions.” He was a top genius who solved problems from his lived experience: depleted soil, fragile farming systems, communities forced to make more with less. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_...

5 Jan

Folks act like biotech is brand new. Turns out, this man was doing biotech with peanuts & sweet potatoes since the early 1900s. GW Carver’s lived reality & genius gave us agricultural biotechnology, plant-based materials, and sustainable systems thinking, long before “biotech” became a buzzword.

4 Jan

🎶 MAGA don’t allow no DEI ‘round here. MAHA don’t allow no rational thinking’ ‘round here. Well we don’t care what MA-blah don’t allow. We gonna do real science anyhow. MAGA don’t allow no DEI ‘round here. 🎶

3 Jan

Brain-wave reading (Electroencephalography, EEG) caps are cool, not gonna lie. *polite clap* But exactly WHOSE head and WHOSE hair is this for? Not mine. If your “cutting-edge neurotech” only works for one phenotype, that’s not gold standard tech, it’s a lazy short cut.