Last week, I met with AF-London’s Jane Ni Dhulchaointigh and James Carrigan over a beer in Shoreditch to discuss transatlantic Awesomeness.

AF-NYC’s Catherine White with AF-London’s Jane Ni Dhulchaointigh and James Carrigan

Tomorrow (Wednesday) AF-London will be awarding their first grant with a party starting at 6.30 pm in The Griffin (93 Leonard Street).  We’re really excited to hear who they pick.  Meanwhile, on the other side of the Pond, Awesome NYC are planning their 4th award party – details soon.

This month, Awesome NYC went somewhere no other Awesome Foundation Chapter has ever been:  Reptiles.

AF-NY has so far brought you LAZORS and a movable pipe organ.  This month we’re pushing forward the boundaries of Awesome even further.  We bring you…. Iguanas.

Real ones.

Elizabeth, one of this month’s Awesome grant recipients up close with Mayor Bloomberg

Picture: Brooklyn Children’s Museum

Iggy and Elizabeth live at The Brooklyn Children’s Museum, and their home needs a makeover.  Specifically, a whole new home.  The $1000 from NY-AF covers all of the supplies and the labor and production could happen in-house.  The enclosure will be created in 2-3 months meaning Iggy and Elizabeth will holding their iguana housewarming party during the summer.  We’re getting a PLAQUE too. Awesome.

As ever, the proposals speak for themselves.  Here’s the original application from Iggy and Elizabeth’s rep at the Museum: Jarad Astin, Live Animal Programmer at Brooklyn Children’s Museum:

“The Brooklyn Children’s Museum serves hundreds of thousands of visitors every single year, providing an opportunity for learning and play with a strong emphasis on the Natural Sciences, Culture, and Early Childhood experience. A goal for our Animal dept. this year is the construction of a new enclosure for our pair of Green iguanas (Iggy and Elizabeth), both of whom are used in exhibition programs. These animals are some of our public favorites, and in her 18 years, Elizabeth has put a smile on the faces of millions of visitors! (Awesome!). We’ve just come out of a large expansion, and greatly improved our Greenhouse experience – and what better place to construct an exhibit/ enclosure for these wonderful animals than there?! Our Live animal collection has been a core part of the museum experience for nearly years – giving inner-city children the chance to meet these critters up close, touch them, see them eat, learn about their diet and habitat, and open the mind to a general concept of conservation through this tactile process. Iguanas are depicted regularly on museum signage throughout the city, and it’s high-time we put them on exhibit in an environment that will help them flourish – where they will continue to do the “hard work” that makes them incredible ambassadors for both their species, the animal kingdom at large, and of course, the Brooklyn Children’s Museum! Both have been feature countless times in local news (both TV and print), and are utilized approx. 3-4 times per week in programming and exhibition. Truly AWESOME critters, doing AWESOME work!”

Me co-presenting April’s award with fellow micro-trustee Elizabeth Stark

Picture: Steve Rosenbaum

Awesome Foundation NYC awarded their first grant!

Awesome NY have made their first selection!  It was tough NY – you completely blew us away with amazing incredibly brilliant ideas.

But – this month, for our inaugural grant, we’ve picked a LASER TWEEZER that makes amoebas eat bacteria.

Awesomeness to the MAX.

No – really, its a laser tractor beam that prods amoebas.  We’ve awarded January’s $1000 grant to Ben Dubin-Thaler’s Cell Motion BioBus.

We celebrated with Ben at the First AF-NY Award Ceremony on Monday February 8. The BioBus was there too, and Ben’s intern from the Frances Perkins Academy in Brooklyn who will be working on the project.  We had a great evening.  Elizabeth Fuller covered the event – pictures and report here.

More on the BioBus:

The BioBus is a mobile science laboratory. Students on board explore the world around them with research-grade microscopes, and make their own discoveries under the guidance of professional scientists.  The BioBus has proven to be an innovative, effective, and attention getting vehicle for science education. Ben has been named “New Yorker of the Week” by New York One and have been recognized in regional, national, and international press for this innovative approach to bridging the “science achievement gap.” A laser tractor beam will be an awe-inspiring addition to the BioBus’ repertoire of excitement generating yet sophisticated tools and experiments.

We’ll let Ben do the talking, here’s his original proposal:

“How many projects are part lightsaber and part Magic School Bus combined into an awesome science adventure? First, I will build a laser tractor beam on board my BioBus. Then, during normal BioBus school visits, students and teachers from underfunded schools in the Bronx and across the country will perform their own experiments by poking, prodding, and perturbing cells using the tractor beam. I will document and publish the construction process in an open-source science education journal, allowing schools and science nerds around the world to build tractor beams of their own.

Every time someone uses the laser tractor beam to hold a bacterium still while they produce a movie of cell division, and then feeds those bacteria to a ravenous amoeba, they will have no other choice but to blurt out, “Awesome!” With extensive experience building laser tractor beams and as founder of the BioBus mobile science lab, I am the only person in the world prepared to do something this awesome.

I started the Cell Motion BioBus two years ago after finishing my Ph.D. at Columbia University. While at Columbia, I built two different laser tractor beam systems (a.k.a. laser tweezers) for my research on cell move, one of which is currently used in the undergraduate physics lab. After graduating with honors and building the BioBus, over 10,000 students at 50 schools across NYC and the country have come aboard our hands-on, high-tech, microscope lab and computer classroom. I’ve been told the introductory video on the BioBus website, http://www.biobus.org, is pretty awesome, so you might be interested in checking that out. Do-it-yourself experiments like building an economical laser tractor beam is possible because of breakthroughs in inexpensive, powerful diode lasers (e.g. skylasers.com).”

Ben will also publish his protocol for building a cheap laser tractor beam via the open-source PASTE project journal.

Last night the NY micro-trustees got together – and here we are….

We’re completely excited to introduce our newest trustees:

Brandon Kessler

Dawn Barber

Steve Rosenbaum

The deadline for this month’s submissions is 11:59 PM Eastern on the 14th (tonight!)  Apply here

So completely jazzed to announce that Awesome Foundation NYC is kicking off!  Grant applications open today, all details here.

What is the Awesome Foundation?!

Its really simple – as the website states:

“We support people doing awesome things in the world. Every month we give out a grant.”

10 people, each giving $100 a month, to give a combined $1000 each month to a totally awesome project.  Super. Cool.  Started in Boston, later to Providence, and now to NYC.

Additional information here.