We describe a previously unreported buffer overflow vulnerability in popular genomics alignment software package BWA. We show how this exploit, combined with well-known attacks allows an attacker to access and modify patient data and manipulate genomic tests. This class of attacks constitutes a wider threat to global biomedical infrastructure and what a newly-formed team from Sandia National Labs and BioBright are doing about it.

"The data driven approach is really creating a new dynamic in the field, in favor of the small companies"

“There’s this fundamental tension between doing an experiment and documenting the experiment,” says Charles Fracchia, who is trying to increase the detail and depth of experiment logs in biomedicine through his company BioBright.

Jarrod Medeiros, Head of IT and Informatics at Casma Therapeutics, and BioBright customer shared insights on how the BioBright platform is being used to deal with the large amounts of data they are generating with High Content Imaging.

How Digital Tools can Augment Human Scientific Output

Automating Research to Improve Reproducibility and Throughput

Our CEO was invited to share his expert opinion on the role of artificial intelligence and digital technologies in science and innovation with the OECD. A video of his remarks is available here.

"[The] collaboration with the Wellcome Sanger Institute could lead to the faster development of drugs for diseases of the immune system like rheumatoid arthritis."

“So everywhere from log files of dispensers, to calibration information of a plate reader, to historical data for the same compounds, we bring in, so you can ask those questions and then display it on a ‘mission control’ view.”

Building the necessary data foundations for AI in the

"Today’s laboratories look very different to ten years ago, but what about ten years from now? The way in which scientist’s approach research has been drastically influenced by the advancement of technologies."

"BioBright, [...] has improved the accuracy of a delicate laboratory technique by more than 20 times in the first deployment of its tools in a working laboratory.

Can we automate life science? Fracchia believes that the solution to the reproducibility crisis is augmentation, not necessarily automation.

Creating the smart laboratory tools of the future that tackle the $28 Billion per year reproducibility crisis in biomedical research.

"BioBright strives to augment human ability to do science in the lab with voice assistance that recognizes biomedical research terms and the use of augmented reality tools."

In this talk, we show the reverse engineering of a pipette and a -80ºC freezer. We show how reverse engineering these tools is not only fun, but necessary to enable open science.

"In light of the impossibility of automating certain tasks, the entrepreneur Charles Fracchia proposes a complementary approach [...] a hardware and software platform that passively registers the activity within the laboratory, arranges it chronologically and displays the data through a single interface."

"Biology is not computer science... We need a smart lab, one in which the human being is optimized, not replaced."

"In this new episode of the Hardware Podcast—which features our first discussion focusing specifically on synthetic biology—David Cranor and I talk with Charles Fracchia, an IBM Fellow at the MIT Media Lab and founder of the synthetic biology company BioBright."

Charles Fracchia presented at SynBioBeta, a conference for synthetic biology.

"He develops software and hardware allowing to put a biology experience in context by measuring and recording a number of data linked to parameters that could impact the way the experience is running. Efficiency, timeliness and reproducibility, doing experiments in biology could enter a new era."

"It is projects like this, especially if created as Open Hardware, which have the potential to change the Open Science game in Biomedical Research. [...] Charles and his team are committed to this mission and are taking things beyond academia and into the real world."