This space is dedicated to notes & milestones done by Kirill Popov as a part of MIT/Harvard course How to Grow (Almost) Anything in Spring 2024.

Course links:

• global course materials: How to Grow (Almost) Anything 2024
• Asia section: How To Grow (Almost) Anything 2024 - Asia & Oceania
• student homework database: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ShMkJziOIp7d4t7jOOSkQF-8m1Ya1HCZXC3CMz5QW4o/edit

Who am I

Currently

• 🔬 ****PhD student in Climate Venture Science, Deep Science Ventures
• 🏭 Looking to decarbonize industries with biology
• 🍏 Particularly curious about construction & bio-wood
• 🏡 Run a coliving space in Tbilisi, Georgia (text me if you’re nearby), and might set up a lab there 🤔
• Location:
  • now: Bali, Indonesia
  • soon: Sri Lanka
• Happy to connect and discuss ideas:
  • linkedin
  • twitter
  • telegram

Previously

• 🤖 Created AI & data products for startups at We Build Data, and for big old companies as a McKinsey data scientist
• ⚛️ Done computational materials science **research at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, figuring out how to make an esoteric crystal based on quantum mechanical calculations
• 🎓 Taught 6 courses, designed a bio-wearable*,* and got a Master’s degree in Materials Science & Engineering at University of California, Berkeley
• ⚡ Used computers to understand what happens when you shine light on gold and graphene nanostructures at Nanyang Technological Univesity, Singapore
• 🌞 Developed protocols to make solar cell materials at Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
• 👨🏽‍🔬 Worked on battery materials, cancer drug synthesis, carbon nanomaterials synthesis and computational modelling, and got a Bachelor’s Degree in Materials Science & Engineering at Moscow State University

Course milestones

Resources found along the way

• DNA manipulation 101 https://docs.google.com/file/d/1GN0AxIg2TzoPHpoeyoWZjyYzSsLBdbSW/edit?usp=docslist_api&filetype=mspresentation
• Bioinformatics tools https://toolkit.tuebingen.mpg.de/
• Extended list of nucleotide symbols https://www.hgmd.cf.ac.uk/docs/nuc_lett.html
• Synthesis platforms
  • Although Escherichia coli serves as a highly valuable leading platform for the production of value-added products, like most Gram-negative bacteria, this bacterium contains a potent immunostimulatory lipopolysaccharide (LPS), referred to as an endotoxin
  • In contrast, Gram-positive bacteria, notably Bacillus, lactic acid bacteria (LAB), Corynebacterium, and yeasts have been extensively used as generally recognized as safe (GRAS) endotoxin-free platforms for the production of a variety of products.
  • https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26362682/
• https://www.snapgene.com/
• bionumbers https://bionumbers.hms.harvard.edu/search.aspx