Alfie
@alfie
1/2)Been back on farcaster for a month or so since @gmo mentioned it and realised I hadn’t done a proper intro - I’m Alfie, I’ve been crypto adjacent (in /DeSci) for 3 years having cofounded @descilondon, but right now particularly focusing on engineering microbes to address the climate crisis. I realised the importance of decentralising access to science when working for a biotech startup building shipping container labs (chronic lack of labs in London and they’re super expensive). Went down a rabbit hole of all the problems academia is entrenched in - misaligned incentives, publications over actual impact, profs writing grants not doing science, reproducibility crisis etc etc Decided to start a community @descilondon along with Bharat (@bh1991 on X) where we showcased people doing science in radically different ways, grew the community to nearly 1k ppl in our telegram & hosted a bunch of conferences
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Alfie
@alfie
2/2)Ironically got offered a phd as my prof attended one of these events (the phd is on engineering microbes to produce sustainable protein and other stuff) Moved to the dark side (academia) but fighting the good fight from inside the system, still want to maintain connection to people in frontier tech doing cool things In my free time u can catch me djing at bioinspired raves, running, cycling, yapping about biology and generally just touching grass.
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