DIYbio Monthly, Issue #1: We're Back

A relaunch, a new $1M community lab project at MIT, and a big new resource for founders

August 12, 2026

It’s been a while. DIYbio.org used to run weekly community roundups on the old blog — News Round-up, Weekly News, event calendars — going back to 2009, and even a physical postcard micro-newsletter for a couple of volumes in 2012. It’s been dormant for a long time. We’re bringing it back, monthly, curated with the help of AI and reviewed by a human before anything goes out.

Here’s what’s new.

MIT’s building a “cloud laboratory for learning” — and it’s a big deal

MIT Media Lab was awarded a $1M grant from the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center to build a platform that lets anyone with an internet connection remotely run real biology, AI, and robotics experiments. It’s led by David Kong, Director of the Media Lab’s Community Biotechnology Initiative — the same group behind the Global Community BioSummit. Not built yet, but worth watching closely: this is exactly the kind of “lower the barrier to entry” project this community has been chasing since 2008.

Full entry, with the grant announcement and background →

New resource: a real map of US biotech incubators & accelerators

If you’re a founder trying to figure out where to get wet-lab space, seed funding, or corporate mentorship, we just added 19 of the major US options to the directory — organized by what they actually offer:

• Turnkey wet-lab space: LabCentral, BioLabs, MBC BioLabs, Alexandria LaunchLabs, SmartLabs
• Corporate/strategic programs: JLABS (Johnson & Johnson), Bayer Co.Lab
• VC-backed accelerators: Y Combinator, a16z Speedrun, SOSV (formerly IndieBio)
• University & regional centers: Bakar BioLabs, QB3 Garage, StartX Med, KU Innovation Park, BioGenerator, Missouri Innovation Center, Kansas Bioscience Park, Sid Martin Biotechnology Incubator, SUNY Downstate Biotechnology Incubator, BioBAT

Browse the full Incubators collection →

Directory clean-up

A batch of overdue fixes to the labs/groups directory: a few entries that had drifted out of date got corrected (addresses, hosting organizations, active status), a couple of duplicate/stub entries got merged into their fuller counterparts, and the homepage map now focuses on community labs specifically rather than blending in every collection type. Small stuff, but it adds up — if you spot something wrong with your own lab or group’s listing, it’s a quick GitHub edit to fix.

Get involved

• Add or update an entry: GitHub tutorial — no coding experience needed, just a GitHub account.
• Something we should cover next month? Email contact@diybio.org.
• Know someone who’d want this in their inbox? Forward this, or point them to the subscribe page.

See you next month.