Hi Til,
thank you! You are of course welcome to visit us, I will gladly discuss with you about our projects and the whole biohackerspace idea. I speak fluent German (with a bit of an Austrian accent though), so I can accomodate to that aswell if you wish. I don't think the laws in my country are much different from yours actually, eg. a lab has to be certified for certain procedures (such as handling GMOs), but a lot of interesting things that are being done in biohackerspace labs across Europe, and in our lab, are doable within the confines of European laws. In fact, some of the most active biohackers are from Germany - there is a group in Munich for example http://biogarage.de/ and there are several people in Berlin aswell. There is a beautiful documentary by a German journalist on DIYBio: http://www.werwiewas.com/de/projekte/die-gen-koeche/ and he has also written a book on the topic.
Unfortunately, we and our lab are currently mid-relocation to new premises, so all of the projects are on hold since we are busy with renovation and moving - thus I am afraid you will catch us a bit "boxed in" :) We are part of a larger place (the prague Brmlab hackerspace) which operates continually and I'm sure we can still meet and talk once you are in Prague. Have a nice day and hope to meet you soon,
Radka "chido" Haneckova
On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 7:52 AM, Til Kreuels kreuels@gmx.de wrote:
Hi Radka and friends,
I am a German biologist (specialized in plant physiology, circadian rhythms) and a soon to be retired biology high school teacher at the same time. As I am very impressed with your great work at Prague (as seen from a distance) I am wondering if it was possible to start a similar setup/hacker space here in Germany. Unfortunately the laws are different here and rather restrictive. So, some of your projects most likely wouldn't be possible over here. As I am visiting Prague with a student group between June 23 and June 26 I would like to ask you, if I could come and meet some of you and/or visit your lab to see a biohacker space in action and have some discussions with you.
Please, let me know what you think. Looking forward to hearing from you ...
All the best
Til (Kreuels)