Open Science Policy
We run our science in the open
We build programmable protein-based materials, with a wide range of possible applications across robotics, aerospace, medical, textiles, and advanced materials. We are a for-profit company, working to advance the future capabilities of an incredible range of materials with large scale impacts.
Why Open
A Large Share of Our Work Is More Useful in the Open
The instrumentation, the characterization methods, the data behind our results, and the approaches that failed — we believe all of it is useful to everyone, ourselves included, in the open.
Our core mission is to advance humanity's capabilities to create an advanced, sustainable material future. As a result of that, we commit to releasing relevant scientific information early and to running our science in a way the wider community can see, reproduce, and build on.
Our Commitments
Our Open-Research Commitments
- Post research data and products early, releasing datasets, characterization results, and finished tools as they mature rather than holding them for a single eventual publication, so the community can put them to use sooner.
- Broaden what we communicate beyond the journal-article format, including full datasets, experimental protocols, instrumentation and open-hardware designs, informative failures, and the open problems we would welcome help on.
- Encourage use of our released tools and data by the scientific community, and invite open critique of their rigor and reproducibility by soliciting feedback rather than waiting for it.
- Document what we learn about sustaining an open-science practice inside a for-profit company, including how the open-versus-protected boundary holds, so that others attempting the same have a worked example rather than starting from nothing.
Outputs
How We Publish
We seek to follow and establish how for-profit organizations can publish FAIR — Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable — research artifacts. Our current outputs include:
- Written technical and scientific articles shared on our community Zenodo page, under a CC BY license.
- Code for our projects shared via GitHub, under an MIT license.
- Posts without a DOI for a general technical audience — assertions, hypotheses, and progress — published in Assembly Required and archived on Zenodo.
- Working on being a "guinea pig" with The Stacks — an experimental publishing platform for research resources, results, ideas, and open questions. Publications coming soon.
- A community Slack channel that we manage and maintain, focused on open science around protein-based fiber formation. Get in touch for an invite.
Collaboration
Who We're Looking to Connect With
- Community partners around materials characterization and reference data, to help us identify, coordinate, or supplement shared datasets and characterization standards for protein-based and bioinspired fibers — where in several areas none yet exist.
- Partners within the scientific community willing to reproduce our work, taking our released methods and instrumentation, reproducing them independently, and engaging in a public conversation about where they hold up, where they do not, and how they could be improved.
If that sounds like you, get in touch.
Areas of Focus
Where We're Focused Draft
The open-science areas we are actively working in, and where outside collaboration would move things fastest.
AI-Assisted Microfluidic Chip Design
Harnessing AI models to enable rapid prototyping capabilities for microfluidics, and bio-inspired fiber manufacturing.
Predictive Protein / Composite Fiber Models
Establishing a foundational model for fiber formation and prediction of performance outcomes.
Bio-Inspired Spinning & Manufacturing Modalities
Building tools that advance our ability to borrow strategies from natural manufacturing — encapsulation, or the chemistry of solvation and formation.
Foundational Mapping of Fiber Possibilities
Expanding on what is currently known or perceived to be possible for fibers.