Hacking the Ivory Tower: Towards Lab Equipment as a Common Good

Thomas Hervé Mboa Nkoudou, Jenny Molloy, Tarek Omar, Lucy Patterson In this session, we will focus on hardware and software solutions, tools and services, resources and projects that adopt the Open Source approach and have one goal: to increase the access to scientific research. We present initiatives and visionaries putting this into action in different regional contexts who will discuss their insights, practical knowledge and experience. What can science learn from hacker culture, which methods and principles can be shared? What impact would this kind of junction have on individual academics? How can digital tools help the global scientific community to promote the growth of knowledge worldwide? Part of the panel are The Gathering for Open Science Hardware, a community of developers and scientists who support the growth of knowledge through global access to hardware for science; openeuroscience.com, a network for Open Science projects; the Open Research Lab for Emerging Technologies, as well as the mobile lab approach developed by the Cairo Hackerspace.