alison stringer

As possibly the only person in New Zealand openly working in DIY Biology, when she stopped doing science for a day job, Alison missed it so much that she started doing science in her kitchen. She has been working in my kitchen, then in a friend’s warehouse, then in Fablab Wgtn and with Fablab Christchurch for the last 2 years. She's now the mycologist in residence at FabLab Wgtn, New Zealand’s first Fablab. Alison works to adapt lab methods to use what can be easily and cheaply found in supermarkets, Asian foodmarts, and camping and hardware stores. She started by growing mushrooms, and she's now growing DIYBio labs and communities.

Very active in the DIYBio, open science, open data and science education communities in New Zealand and beyond, Alison is a founder of the open genomics platform Genomics Aotearoa NZ. She is also founding member of the Space and Science Festival Trust, which runs an annual week of hands-on science/tech education events in New Zealand.

She's passionate about opening up the tools, techniques and results of science for people to create platforms for accessibility, acceleration and impact.

She has degrees in plant and microbial science from Otago University, and undertook graduate studies in Dr Ian Hall’s edible ecomycorrhizal fungi group.