BIOECONOMY
What’s in store for our next year?
We started as a publication about biotechnology, and we’ve become a community about our future.
I started Bioeconomy.XYZ at the beginning of 2020 as a way to connect people and ideas across the internet. I had just ended my job in Washington, DC, and the COVID-19 pandemic was rapidly growing around the world. All of a sudden, I found myself feeling isolated and trapped without enough information about how the SARS-CoV-2 was going to impact my life.
Ironically, I was not alone in my sense of isolation. But as I started recruiting people to contribute their thoughts and their vision to BEXYZ, I started to see the amazing creativity blossoming across the biotechnology community. Authors were writing about biotechnology as an expression of art and creativity, people were sharing their thoughts about their careers and ambitions and having healthy debates about academia, industry, and so many other routes in life.
By the end of 2020, Bioeconomy.XYZ has grown into a community of people sharing ideas and helping each other reach new heights in their goals. I’m excited for what comes next, and I want to share a little about what we have in store for 20201.
The next year of Bioeconomy.XYZ
The first thing I want to do is introduce you to our phenomenal new Managing Editor, Katy Hamilton. I first met Katy when she reached out via LinkedIn for a chat about her job search. She was at the end of her Master’s and was starting to hunt for what’s next. Over the course of a conversation, and the many great articles she wrote for BEXYZ, it became glaringly obvious that her vision and passion for life was exactly what BEXYZ needed. So this fall, I invited her to join our platform as our Managing Editor, where she is spearheading the launch of our 2021 themes. Inviting Katy to join was probably the smartest thing I’ve done for BEXYZ to date.
In the coming weeks, we’re rolling our seven new themes across the platform, and we’re recruiting authors to contribute across all of them.
As you can see from the descriptions below, we’re covering topics from moments of inspiration to explaining the fundamentals with the Einstein challenge. In other words, if you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.
Eureka!
The process of scientific discovery is hardly ever linear. It’s messy, convoluted, and often involves odd sources of inspiration. We want to hear about those Archimedes moments in personal scientific enlightenment and in groundbreaking breakthroughs. As we shake our heads and say “how the heck did you come up with that?” share with us the overflowing bathtub that galvanized the ingenuity. The more honest and random the better.
Science in Society
Science does not happen in a void. Let’s explore the relationship between biotech creation and the societal context in which it occurs. There are limitless angles to explore: history, policy, mores, psychology, scientific literacy, current events, and bioethics just to name a few.
Fundamentals Explained
Biotech is awesome. Non-negotiable fact on this platform. But achieving the end result takes a nuanced and technical understanding of the world and experimental design. Break it down and teach us something new. Make the complex uncomplicated.
There’s a Problem: Biotech Can Solve It
Between climate change, water shortages, and infectious diseases there are some pretty daunting issues facing humanity. We believe that collaboration with nature holds the key to many of the problems we face. Show us novel biotech solutions to our most urgent dilemmas.
The Business of the Bioeconomy
For innovations to leave the lab and make an impact, business is the vehicle for change. So what does it take to build a thriving bioeconomy? A successful launch plan requires funding, marketing, tech valuation, ecosystem development, and strategy. We want to learn about it all.
Biotech as Humanity’s Highest Art Form
Biotechnology is the result of humanity bringing its creativity to a collaborative experience with nature. We see the partnership as humanity’s best art form. Help us explore this intersection from the perspective of both the scientist and the artist. Maybe we will find that they are the same.
The Voices of Biotech — Crafting Careers of Impact
Contributing to the biotech that will shape our collective future is certainly compelling. Let’s talk about what it takes to establish a fulfilling and dynamic career. Let’s build that bioeconomy.
We are so excited to roll these out over the coming weeks, and we’re always looking for people to contribute!
A National Bioeconomy Manufacturing and Innovation Initiative
Since I’m actually kicking off our Sciences and Society theme, I’d like to share some policy thoughts. In addition to my work on BEXYZ, I have continued to be heavily involved in our national discussion about the future of our bioeconomy. Given that the beginning of 2021 will see a Presidential transition and a new administration with new priorities, I wrote a proposal to start the conversation about what a coordinated effort to promote and protect our bioeconomy would look like.
A National Bioeconomy Manufacturing and Innovation Initiative.
I was fortunate to be able to publish this in collaboration with the Day One Project, which is a phenomenal source of deep thinking across a range of topics. I would absolutely suggest you check out what they have to say, across a wide range of topics, and the voices they empower to say it as well.
Please join us!
We’re always looking to connect and collaborate with great people. If you, or anyone you know, is interested in working with us, please reach out. We like to have a good laugh, a deep thought, then write our words down on paper. Or at least our era’s version of paper here on Medium.
Alexander Titus is the Founder of Bioeconomy.XYZ and is a technology executive whose career spans academia, industry, and government. You can find him on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Medium.
