TL;DR: $10,000 in prizes for ideas on how to speed up wet-lab experiments. Prizes will be given for ideas that are highly original and technically tractable. A few paragraphs will suffice. Please send ideas to nsmccarty3@gmail.com with the words “Fast Biology” in the title by March 15th, 11:59pm Pacific.
Wet-lab biology is a major bottleneck for scientific progress. Even in a scenario where AI models come up with useful ideas, those hypotheses must still be tested in the real world.
And yet, the world is slow. Atoms are harder and more expensive to manipulate than bits. A kid with a $1,000 laptop can make a nearly infinite number of digital things using solely the electricity from a wall socket. But cloning even a single gene — something biologists do for just about any experiment — takes several days, hundreds of dollars in reagents, and tens of thousands in equipment. This is unacceptable.
Fortunately, history shows that technical advances can drastically reduce the time and cost of common methods. In 1965, it took Robert Holley several years to sequence a single alanine tRNA, consisting of just 77 nucleotides. Today, an entire human genome, with billions of nucleotides, can be sequenced in a few hours, thanks mostly to innovations in chemistry and high-resolution microscopy. Similar improvements are long overdue for other biology methods.
Therefore, I’m offering $10,000 in prizes for ideas to speed up or reduce costs for wet-lab experiments. Prizes will be awarded for ideas that are both highly original and technically tractable. These bounties are supported by Astera Institute.
One idea might be to create a protein printer that enables scientists to fabricate any amino acid sequence without needing to order a DNA template. Or, perhaps you have an idea to use Vibrio natriegens (an organism that divides every nine minutes) with some kind of in situ mutagenesis system to speed up mutational scanning studies. The sky is the limit, and these are only tiny examples.
You may submit ideas about anything; narrow or broad. Just don’t forget about originality and tractability. I’m skeptical that winning ideas will propose general solutions, or make hand-wavey statements about wet-lab automation, cloud labs, and “physical intelligence.” My strong suspicion is that the best ideas will propose concrete, technical approaches to speed up widespread methods, like PCR or cloning or protein synthesis.
This competition is open to anybody, regardless of background or experience. You may remain anonymous. I’m also open, in principle, to keeping your idea private for a period up to three months. There is no limit on submissions, either in terms of quantity or length. I plan to award four prizes, with amounts totaling $5,000 / $3,000 / $1,000 / $1,000. Winners will be notified one week after submissions close, on March 22nd.
Send submissions to nsmccarty3@gmail.com with “Fast Biology” in the subject line by March 15th, 11:59pm PT. (If I receive just one great idea, I will consider this a smashing success.)
Terms: These bounties are a one-time award and not a grant to support future research, study, or services. Acceptance of a bounty does not create any employment or contractor relationship with Astera Institute. I cannot send money to people living in countries “blacklisted” by the United States. (See this website for more details.) Anybody who is currently affiliated with Astera Institute is not eligible. Ideas must be submitted via email and before the deadline to be considered. All decisions are final and made according to the perceived originality, clarity, and feasibility of the idea. I may not award bounties if no submission meets these standards. Authors retain full ownership over their ideas, but grant me a non-exclusive, royalty-free license to publish or reference the idea with appropriate attribution. Paid bounties are taxable income.
