PODCAST: The Lab of the Future Jon Brennan-Badal, CEO of Opentrons, talks about how open source can accelerate research

Opentrons CEOJon Brennan-Badal joins SLAS's podcast "New Questions: Inside the Heart of SLAS" to discuss the origins of Opentrons and how it is leading our approach to open source automation, reliability and security. Access API and now Opentrons Flex.

In this 40-minute podcast hosted by SLAS's Hannah Rosen, Jon takes listeners through the evolution of his personal career and the trajectory of Opentrons. From the time he founded Comixology, a digital comics company that was later sold to and started at Amazon, Jon has always wanted to solve the complex challenges facing the world. He sees one major hurdle in the robotics and life sciences industries that scientists must overcome: accessibility.

When joining Opentrons and creating our first iteration of the bot, he and our team as a whole decided to approach accessibility issues through an “outsider” perspective. Opentrons began as a project led by biohackers who wanted to bring then-unfinished innovations to the life sciences. Nine years later, the innovations created by Opentrons early on have culminated in the most affordable, easy-to-use robots in the life sciences industry: the OT-2 and Opentrons Flex.

One of Opentrons' fundamental tenants is open source hardware and software, meaning a single platform can support many different applications across multiple life sciences industries. As Jon said in the podcast, "We see that the story of life sciences is really a long story of all these unique different types of applications within the laboratory, because all of these different specialized research areas have specialized needs, which is It's unlikely that any one company can effectively address and service all of these needs." This is what sets Opentrons apart from standard life sciences automation companies.

View the full podcast Here.