Classes 4, 6, 8 and 10 are lab weeks. No class on 13 October.
Class 1 · 15 Sep Course overview and introduction
- Lecture: Course overview and introduction Documentation pending
- Homework: Homework #1 · Initial Idea for Biomanufacturing Draft
Class 2 · 22 Sep DNA design and applications
- Lecture: DNA design and applications Documentation pending
- Homework: Class 2 homework Documentation pending
Class 3 · 29 Sep Cell-free systems, cloud labs, Ginkgo field trip
- Lecture: Cell-free systems, cloud labs, Ginkgo field trip Documentation pending
- Homework: Class 3 homework Documentation pending
Class 4 · 6 Oct Cloud lab cell-free manufacturing Lab week
- Homework: Class 4 homework Documentation pending
- Lab: Cloud lab cell-free manufacturing Documentation pending
Class 5 · 20 Oct Digital microfluidics
- Lecture: Digital microfluidics Documentation pending
- Homework: Class 5 homework Documentation pending
- Final project: Final project, crit 1 Documentation pending
Class 6 · 27 Oct Microfluidic cell-free manufacturing Lab week
- Homework: Class 6 homework Documentation pending
- Lab: Microfluidic cell-free manufacturing Documentation pending
Class 7 · 3 Nov Measurement and assays
- Lecture: Measurement and assays Documentation pending
- Homework: Class 7 homework Documentation pending
Class 8 · 10 Nov Microbial manufacturing Lab week
- Homework: Class 8 homework Documentation pending
- Lab: Microbial manufacturing Documentation pending
Class 9 · 17 Nov Genetic circuit design and assembly
- Lecture: Genetic circuit design and assembly Documentation pending
- Homework: Class 9 homework Documentation pending
Class 10 · 24 Nov Mammalian cell manufacturing Lab week
- Homework: Class 10 homework Documentation pending
- Lab: Mammalian cell manufacturing Documentation pending
Class 11 · 1 Dec Non-model organisms
- Lecture: Non-model organisms Documentation pending
- Homework: Class 11 homework Documentation pending
Class 12 · 8 Dec Final project presentations
- Homework: Class 12 homework Documentation pending
- Final project: Final project presentation Documentation pending
Currently exploring
What could a living system manufacture?
The final project takes the form of a grant proposal. Its starting point is a connection between an output, a living-system chassis and an automation approach.
Course framework · Project direction in development
Open the project planning notebook →What to make
A material, medicine, sensor, energy output, or art and design artifact.
What makes it
A chosen chassis, such as cell-free lysate, microbial cells or mammalian cells.
How to run it
Cloud lab robotics, desktop liquid handling, or programmable microfluidics.
About me
I’m Malene, and I study nanoscience at Aarhus University’s Interdisciplinary Nanoscience Center (iNANO).
I like making things, but I like the part just before that even more: when something doesn’t exist yet and I have to work out how it could. That’s true whether I’m painting, writing, coding or in the lab. Once I can see the outline of how something might work, I start looking for the pieces. I don’t care much which “discipline” they officially belong to as long as they survive contact with reality.
Nanoscience is where that way of thinking gets especially literal. What a material becomes, and what it can do, depends on what it is made of, how its parts are arranged and what is happening around it. I want to understand those relationships well enough that I can eventually start designing them on purpose.
One of the things I’m particularly interested in is how materials interact with living systems, and whether those interactions can be used to build with. To me, that’s still a materials question: what changes when you put the two together, and what can you make possible by controlling that interaction?
For my bachelor’s project, I made a bioink for 3D bioprinting nerve-like tissue in the Laboratory for Adaptive Materials. I’m still in the same lab at iNANO, now synthesizing chiral metal nanoparticles. Alongside that, I’m part of Aarhus University’s first iGEM team, where we’re building RiboLogic, a folded RNA device that uses logic to detect specific miRNAs and respond with a therapeutic output.
I don’t really think of those as separate interests. A hydrogel, a metal nanoparticle and a folded RNA molecule are all materials with different behaviours and constraints, but I approach them in much the same way: understand what they can do, then work out what you can make from that.
Biomanufacturing interests me for the same reason. I’m used to thinking about materials as something you synthesize, formulate or assemble; I want to understand what changes when the material is instead grown, produced or assembled by living systems. That’s why I’m taking HTBAA: I want to learn how to build with those things too.
Get in touch
Notebook activity
Words written, by class
6,660 words
View counts by class
| Class | Words | Total |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · 15 Sep | 6660 | 6660 |
| 2 · 22 Sep | 0 | 6660 |
| 3 · 29 Sep | 0 | 6660 |
| 4 · 6 Oct | 0 | 6660 |
| 5 · 20 Oct | 0 | 6660 |
| 6 · 27 Oct | 0 | 6660 |
| 7 · 3 Nov | 0 | 6660 |
| 8 · 10 Nov | 0 | 6660 |
| 9 · 17 Nov | 0 | 6660 |
| 10 · 24 Nov | 0 | 6660 |
| 11 · 1 Dec | 0 | 6660 |
| 12 · 8 Dec | 0 | 6660 |
About the course
How to Biomanufacture (Almost) Anything
MIT Media Lab · Fall 2026
Faculty: David Kong, Joseph Jacobson, George Church.
Lectures: Tuesdays, 2:30–4:00 p.m. ET.
Recitations: Thursdays, 5:00–6:00 p.m. ET.
On lab weeks, both sessions are devoted to labwork.
Course topics and project requirements are drawn from the supplied Fall 2026 syllabus.