An Engineer, a Physicist and a Microscopist Walk into a Bar

How would you feel being tested for cancer, knowing the pathologist is using a microscope that costs less than an Xbox, is made of brightly coloured plastic, and was built less than an hour away from you? And why are all of these useful features? Joe is one of the developers of the OpenFlexure Microscope, a 3D printed microscope that's gone from a shed in Cambridge to rainforests in Panama, the Antarctic ice, and hospitals around the globe. Join him as he talks about the engineering and social challenges of developing a device with the ambition of "Microscopy for Everyone"

Although we are getting better at understanding and treating more diseases, there is a continuous development of new and better drugs. Before new drugs can be administered to patients they must undergo rigorous testing. We are developing mini organ models which can replace animal testing and are better representative for the human physiology. But their potential is much bigger. They can be used to study rare diseases using modern gene editing techniques but are also sent to space to improve our understand of space travel as we prepare for the next frontier.