About Me and my Lab
I am Rick Byers, a software engineer during the day, and a molecular biology hobbyist on nights and weekends. I live in Waterloo, Canada.
I am fascinated (and frustrated) by the impact viruses have on our lives while remaining almost completely invisible to us. In the future it will be commonplace to closely observe microbes and the response of our immune systems, and this will revolutionize our approach to individual healthcare and public health. Through my home molecular biology lab, I am trying to get a glimpse of what living in that future will feel like. Through this blog and on BlueSky, I aim to share and discuss what I learn with others who are similarly fascinated by it. You can read more about my motivation and lab setup in the speaker notes of a presentation I gave back in 2023: Challenges of Personal Biotechnology.
Research Interests
- Detecting and quantifying viruses using RT-qPCR
- Viral and bacterial genomics
- Gene expression monitoring
- Homebrew biology equipment
- Personal genomics
- AI-assisted computational biology
My primary lab equipment
- Biomeme Franklin 3-channel qPCR
- Oxford Nanopore MinION sequencer
- MiniPCR mini8 and mini16 PCR machines
- Promega Quantus fluorometer
- MiniPCR gyro plus centrifuge
- MiniPCR BluGel electrophoresis system
- Pluslife molecular point of care test system
- 50+ TaqMan primer/probe assays covering about 20 different viruses (and 3 positive controls)
- 160+ respiratory samples from my family (inactivated and purified for safe storage)
My education and scientific background
- Lots and lots of trial and error, reading papers and watching YouTube videos
- Volunteer strategic advisor for COVID testing with StaySafeScreen
- BMath in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo
- MS in Computer Science from the University of Washington (with a focus on Computational Biology)