[2025 -2026] Biohackers who keep the lab running
Anthony Neil Tan
President & Board Member & Wet-Lab Biology Instructor Projects Plant Biology Affiliations Student Makers |
I am a wet-lab biology instructor at Counter Culture Labs and a synthetic biologist with a degree in Bioengineering from UC Berkeley.
I got involved in STEM education back in high school when I founded Student Makers, a non-profit initiative that provides hands-on maker workshops to secondary school students (3D Printing, Arduino Programming, Hydroponic Gardening). Today, I serve as a Board Member of Student Makers. I am excited about using my expertise in curriculum design to create innovative and engaging programs for youth at CCL. |
Starbuck Ennis
Outreach Coordinator & Board Member Projects Plant Biology |
I am a homemaker, a full time parent, a retired nanny, a profesional urban food gardener, and the recent community outreach coordinator for counter culture labs in oakland california. ask me anything about plants, especially corn.
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Current CCL Secretary. Hosting the open mycology lab on Mondays at CCL is her passion. She has a wide exposure to Science and Natural History and loves to teach. Her Bachelor of Arts led her to life long learning and observation of the environment around us. She taught several years at Merritt College in the BioSciences Department in Microscopy and Genomics. She is currently a small business owner. Her hobby includes making CCL a great space to experiment in!
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Patrik D'haeseleer
Safety Officer & Board Member Projects Kombucha Genomics Real Vegan Cheese Affiliations Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory |
Patrik D’haeseleer is a bioinformatician by day, mad scientist by night. He is a co-founder of Counter Culture Labs, community projects coordinator at BioCurious, and scientific advisor of the Glowing Plant project, none of which are in any way related to or funded by his day job at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
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Jacob Boysen
Fundraising Coordinator Projects Mold Sequencing |
I'm a genetics lab-rat turned data scientist. I love in vivo experiments, I love data, I love biologists, I love talking about biology; I don't love filling out government forms or writing paywalled papers. CCL allows me to get back to my roots and do bench science without all the nonsense.
As fundraising coordinator, my aim is to connect with any party interested in sponsoring grass roots STEM projects and outreach. I look forward to helping fund some interesting science and seeing CCL grow! |
David Anderson
Lab Manager & Board Member Projects Open Insulin |
I have been actively pursuing the production of insulin at CCL since joining the Open Insulin project in 2015. In 2021, I became the Lab Manager to help organize and resupply the lab.
My professional career has been database programming in the retail industry. I have always had a fascination in science so I went back to college and received a Certificate in BioTechnology at the Peralta Colleges. |
Joshua Chemparathy
Treasurer & Board Member Projects Food Science Mycology Affiliations Sinwise Beverages |
Joshua Chemparathy, former data scientist, is currently the founder of a plant-to-cup beverage company focusing on highlighting ingredients grown on his family's cardamom farm and surrounding tea, coffee, spices, in the mountains of south India.
He is most interested in the intersection of plant science and flavor, and he is working on developing a Food Science group at CCL. This group will work on positive identification of culinary plants or seeds through genomic sequencing for the safe human consumption, investigating the development of flavors during the post-harvest processing of coffee fruits or tea leaves, the extraction and synthesis of natural flavors from raw materials, and eventually working with the Plant Bio group to investigate the use of plant genomics to mitigate the impending impacts of climate change on agriculture. |
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I'm currently an officer and board member of the community science organization, Counter Culture Labs in addition to the affiliated science research organization, Open Insulin Foundation. Prior to CCL I've had a distinguished career in technology user experience (UX) that ranged from individual team contributor to senior manager with such major companies as GE Digital, SAP, PeopleSoft, Adobe Systems, MetaDesign, Sun Microsystems, Apple Computer and several start-up companies.
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