29 April 2025
Some contributors to the carbon footprint such as energy use, business travel and ventilation may be more obvious to researchers. What is often less understood in a lab is the direct and indirect impacts of the materials used to conduct research. Using high grade materials requires a lot of different resources. …
21 March 2025
In the light of climate change, biologists are working together to find a way of running scientific meetings in a more sustainable manner. We are putting a call out to everyone (biologists or not) to share with us their ideas to innovate event organisation to have a lower environmental impact.
Write an essay of maximum 1,000 words to detail how your idea will change scientific events organisation and will open the door to a new concept of organising events in the next 10 years.
The best ideas will be rewarded. The winning essays will be rewarded with £250 for first prize, £150 for second prize and £100 for third prize. The winning essays will be selected by our Sustainability Committee and will have the opportunity to feature on our website. …
25 February 2025
To commemorate the 100th birthday of Journal of Experimental Biology (JEB) in 2023, The Company of Biologists and JEB launched two new grants to champion the emerging talents in comparative physiology and biomechanics. One of our inaugural grant awardees is Erin Leonard from Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada. …
3 February 2025
Doing experiments in a lab setting has many advantages. It allows you to focus on a single aspect without the interference of outside influences. Creating these artificial conditions relies on a range of equipment, from computers to incubators and cooling devices. In addition, biologists, chemists and physicists have learned to hijack biological processes such as DNA amplification (using PCR) and DNA modifications (changing the genetic code using CRISPR). These methods rely on sterile conditions, precise temperature control and pure reagents to work well. Thus, modern research allows for groundbreaking discoveries, but it also requires high-end energy intensive equipment. …
13 January 2025
Within research labs there are several recognisable appliances which use a considerable amount of energy. These appliances include freezers for storing samples, incubators for optimising growing conditions and ovens for sterilising equipment. Additionally, there are hidden energy-demanding sources, which may often go overlooked. Ventilation systems and accessories, including fume hoods, may use up to 35% of the energy use in a modern lab. The ventilation systems are there to protect the researchers by exchanging the air in the lab every 5 to 8 minutes and to provide perfect experimental conditions that allow for high reproducibility but uses high amounts of energy by constantly moving, heating/cooling and humidification of the air. In addition, operating systems such as computers and servers are required to be constantly on, adding to the energy footprint. …
24 April 2025
It has been one month since we celebrated our 100-year anniversary alongside our biological community at the Biologists @ 100 conference, hosted in ACC Liverpool, UK, on 24-27 March 2025. We have many special things planned for this momentous year and this community conference was a major event in our 2025 plans. We are delighted that the conference was so well attended and we received excellent feedback, which we are proud to share. A huge thank you to everyone who was able to join us for our conference, who contributed in ways both large and small, to making this event a success. …
26 February 2025
The consumable products in the lab, such as tubes, vials, enzymes and other reagents, are often the major contributor to the lab carbon footprint. For universities that calculate a complete carbon footprint for the entire institute (e.g., Copenhagen University and UCL), lab consumables stand out as one of the major contributing categories. Though an exact carbon footprint of a single product is often lacking (we often do not have enough data for a complete life cycle analysis), there are tools like spend-based methods which can help to get a good overview of the total impact of a single product. …
17 February 2025
As The Company of Biologists steps into its second century, it also announces a new senior management structure to take the Company forward. Dr Claire Moulton, previously the Company’s Publisher, has been appointed as its first ever Chief Executive Officer. She will be working closely with Katie Ward, who has been appointed as the Chief Financial Officer and Charity Director. We meet up with Claire to learn more about the recent changes and how they will strengthen the organisation as it moves forward.
16 January 2025
As part of Journal of Experimental Biology’s 100-year anniversary celebration in 2023, The Company of Biologists launched two new funding initiatives aimed at supporting junior faculty staff setting up their first laboratory and research group. This critical career stage is markedly challenging considering the few funding opportunities available. We recognise that junior faculty staff represent the future of the field and created these funding opportunities to continue to support the experimental biology community.
One of our 2024 grant awardees is Pauline Fleischmann from Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg, Germany. …
9 December 2024
With a growing interest in sustainability in academia, we need to help the biological community embrace these practices within their lab. This is the first of six posts in which I will focus on how to make labs more sustainable. This first post offers an overall picture of academia’s environmental impact. …
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