 Hi everyone, so we're ready to start the next talk and I'm very happy to introduce Rachel who's talking to us about making fashion technology and Human organs. I'm Marissa Redd at the first time. I thought I was making it out of human organs, but it's not so anyway over to you Rachel. Thank you Hello everyone, sorry about the technical delay Okay, so today I decided to talk about what it's like making Well, as you guys are very familiar with the internet making and the age of the internet and To begin I'm just going to introduce myself I am my name is Rachel And I am known as Connie Chua Kitty, which is also the branding for my fashion tech I am a maker hacker Fashion tech engineer stem cell scientist as well as a mental health advocate So Why am I speaking today? I like to talk to you about Making wearables what are they and why I'm making wearables in terms of fashion technology? I also like to scare you or give you a view into the future of medicine using tissue engineering Which is the creation of human organs and Lastly just to share my experiences in doing both these things So first of all making wearable fashion technology The reason why I've designed this Presentation in a way that you know on how to get started is because I often get a lot of questions from people Asking how do you get into it? You know, especially since I'm actually doing something completely different, which is stem cell research So first of all, what is wearable technology wearable technology is a blanket term for electronics that can be worn on the body Either as an accessory or part of material used in clothing This means that it can be accessories that are specifically designed to fit on your body or Some sort of electronics attached to textile Which access a carrier for these electronics? So wearable tech can be categorized into two main categories namely health tech, which a lot of us know off and fashion technology So health tech products are such as fitness trackers Which helps you to keep track of your number of steps, how many steps you climb How many calories you burn your heart rate and also like it provides all your information and connected to the internet So you can find out more about it Fashion tech on the other hand includes clothing with expressions fashion tag doesn't believe in attaching a mobile phone or a Laptop to your body because at the end of the day, you're still gonna want to use your laptop You're still gonna want to use your phones for ease of accessibility fashion tech believes in creating a second skin in terms of enhancing and a user's experience So some examples of fashion tag includes Clothing that can reflect your mood or it can enhance your Experience if you are wearing it in a theater and it sends vibrations to your body I've selected Okay, well I've decided to try fashion tag rather than health tech in terms of wearables because I believe that fashion tag is a lot more relatable to a lot of people in the sense that With health tech you have to understand what the information provided to you mean So you actually need to put in effort to understand The information that's provided on the other hand with fashion tag Every day you have to make a conscious fashion decision You wake up in the morning and you think to yourself. Am I going to wear this t-shirt or that t-shirt? Will this trousers or skirt go with this top or not? So it relates to everyone So here I'm going to show an example of some of my personal fashion tag projects This is a floral necklace made with neopixel rings and controlled by the raspberry pie and the raspio hat Okay. Yeah. So The purpose of this is really just to express myself. Why should I wear a Basic chunky necklace when I can do something like this that not only express of myself But creates a lot of interest a lot of discussion And also encourages other people to try to do more with their accessories following that another project that I've made So this is one of the first Accessories that I've made it uses again a raspberry pi zero and a unicorn hat and The purpose of this is again to have fun to express myself and also this has encouraged a lot of People who like I I want to say girls or women But there are a lot of people other than girls or women specifically who like this kind of aesthetic And it encourages them to try electronics or basic programming So how to get started again a lot of people Asked how do I get started with making this when I show my pieces at exhibitions? So first of all the first thing that's really really important to get into making or Just learning a new skill is to be inspired So when I look for inspiration, you know I did a little bit of a google search and when I search wearables It just returned a bunch of FitBits VR headsets, which is not what I was looking for So I did a little bit more digging. I found a lot of images on Pinterest that attracted me for example this dress by cute circuit who Yeah, who displays various lights Cute circuit is a brand who has also designed clothing such as the twitter dress for people like Nicole Schoeninger Following that there is also this artist called Anu Weprak who designed this spider-like projections using servos and 3d printing to project when people invade her personal space, which I think is very useful At the same time fashion technology doesn't have to be electronics on textile or electronics somehow attached to your body It can also involve the type of technology used to design the material For example, LA's design create prosthetic covers using CNC milling laser etching and 3d printing So once you're inspired you're more likely to go and look into it even more So one of the things that I did which really helped me Know a bit more about electronics and coding is by attending events And at these events it helps to ask a lot of questions For example, I think there is a lot of you in this crowd who probably has an have an understanding of electronics coding programming and hacking I'm very new to this So a lot of times when I show up these events it helps me to ask questions like what is this Can you explain to me how this thing works and to use terminologies that I can later on Look up on the internet So some places that have been really useful for me to just learn a new skill is forums and chat rooms So the thing with forums and chat rooms is that it's helpful if you know what to look for If you know the right terminology in which my case I often don't know what to look for So I turn to social media With social media nowadays it's very easy to just take a photo of your problem Like if I build something as this white smoke coming out of it I'm just like white smoke you know searching on the internet but that's not helpful If I take an image of exactly the problem and upload it on Twitter I can get so many people to just help me just using hashtags like makers help or things like that If I can't find a specific person to help me people can share it They can retweet it they can tag someone else who might know better And lastly what really helped me was customer services There is a lot of customer services online such as platforms like Twitter For some reason these guys they don't sleep they have the person behind the Account is usually just a regular person, you know checking their Twitter all the time or they have it on their phone So when it beeps they can immediately answer your question again If they are not able to directly help you they would know of someone who's specialized to do so So another thing that was really helpful in learning a new skill is to try kits And you can there are so many kits out there that can be specified to so many different things There are kits that are specifically for basic electronics how to light an LED There are kits for soldering. There are kits for combining Cardboard craft with electronics and kits for programming. So here is an example of One of the kits that I've designed which involves soldering wires together because I realized that Most kits that teach soldering Is to teach you how to solder a flat something flat or like a flat PCB So through this kit To answer a lot of questions when people ask how do how can kits get started? How can they create accessories that Reflect the aesthetic. This is something that I created to show that On top of that, you know when you go when you buy something there's a If they have an online page There's a very good chance that they provide a lot of detail. Otherwise You can also probably find on youtube a lot of things and a lot of variations from what you've purchased And so go from there and that way you can create your own aesthetic So um moving on from that. I'm going to teach you how to make human organs So I am doing a phd uh that involves growing eyeballs using stem cells Um So people ask me how does that even work? So how to get started So what is tissue engineering tissue engineering is the use of a combination of cells engineering materials and methods and suitable Grow factors that help you create your ideal organ The aim of tissue engineering is to Create an organ that's personalized to you That will overcome any need for organ donors and overcome problems like organ rejection So how can we do this? So first of all, we need stem cells We would get these stem cells from patients who want to grow their own organs Secondly, we need scuffles What are scuffles? Scuffles is basically the house that the cells can attach to in order for it to grow Other things that will be needed is growth factors. So they're basically food for these cells to survive Vasculature provides A network for delivering this food What's really important as well is published and unpublished literature And the reason for this is because Research is a race against time If you create something that hasn't been published You want to put it out as fast as possible And when someone has published that And if you are working on the same thing You want to use that as your stepping stone to push you ahead of that person so that you can publish the next thing Unpublished literature refers to things like collaborations Lastly the goal of tissue engineering again is to create off-the-shelf organs So that one day you'll be able to go into a shop and be like You know pick and mix. I want a little bit of this I want a little bit of that and I like to put all of that in my liver because I'm a heavy drinker that sort of thing So To give you an idea what are stem cells? So stem cells can come from Any part of the body Stem cells are basically the baby cells That create an embryo So in the early days stem cells were harvested from embryos Right now we can obtain Stem cells from just a simple skin biopsy of a patient So this is very non-invasive Using a simple skin biopsy We then give it a lot of growth factors to make it think that it is in an embryonic environment When it thinks it's in that environment, they then go back against time and reverse their age So from a mature brain cell a mature lung cell a mature heart cell They go back against time and become an embryonic stem cell So using this embryonic stem cell When we study human development, we're able to target what sort of growth factors cause it to develop into a brain or heart a lung We use those same growth factors apply it to these embryonic stem cells And we have our organ But it really isn't that simple because if you grow a mass of cells, it's probably going to form a tumor It's not going to form the shape that you want it to So this is where we introduce scaffolds So this is an image of a decelerarized liver and a decelerarized large intestine So decelerarization is the process of using various detergent and enzymes to strip an organ of its cells and DNA Once you strip it of all its cells and DNA it loses the natural pigments that you normally see And give you this transparent structure This transparent structure acts just like a scaffolding of a house When you're building a house you're going to need scaffolding to hold things up So this scaffolding Which is the Yeah, the the structure of the house When you add cells to it, it's like adding bricks to a house These cells will then specialize into different things like A living room in a house for example, and that would be a specialized heart or brain And so on So moving on to things like Psyhub, what is it? So there is a lot of people out there who are not you know subscribed to various journals and also A lot of these journals are only accessible to people who are in academia And I don't think that should be the case You know like nowadays It's so easy for us to find information, but we do want to be well informed and not just Reading off some news, which is not properly cited or reference So Psyhub is a place where people go to get these journals free So there is so there's a couple of issues with this website, you know Legal issues and things like that, but various more have popped up So if you want to be well informed just look up a very good journal a very good review And from that a good review will teach you everything from scratch You don't have to be an expert in order to get started So that's It for you guys if you want to go home and create your own organs all you need is a scaffold Some of your own stem cells just a simple skin biopsy And then you're basically ready to go you also need a bit of some financial help, but yeah Figure that out So just to sum everything together I like to talk about the obstacles and lessons I've learned through making So How many of you have heard this phrase? There are no more original ideas It's been said so many times and I've heard it more and more recently just because You know the internet is so accessible. It's so easy to find Something that you've made that looks similar to something someone else has made Does that actually Make your idea unoriginal? I don't believe so because ideas stem from problems It is We are a lot more related than we think we have a lot of the same problems If you have the same problems, you're probably going to come up with the same ideas Again, that doesn't mean that your idea is unoriginal No one's going to say hey, you copied my problem so Your ideas are yours your ideas can be similar to someone else, but they are original But if you do Look up, you know, like how to solve a problem And then if that thing inspired you to create something of yours It is important very very important to credit where credit is due So one of the first things you can do when you want to credit someone is to ask Ask how they would like to be credited Because some people they don't like to be credited. They're just like, okay You know, I just put this up and I just want to stay anonymous. So that's really important And more importantly, you should ask whether it's okay to use whatever it is or to share whatever it is that you want to share That belongs to someone else Secondly Inform them where you're going to use it just because you know, just because you credit someone It's not okay for that person to turn up somewhere and realize that they are, you know The information is just everywhere and they don't know where it's been said. So that's really important Secondly I think it's really really important to say thanks you know, because when you do In cut when you do say thanks to someone for their idea It really encourages them To do some more to want to contribute some more to the information that is already readily available Lastly when you say thank you to you know, someone who perhaps created something they are selling it, but it inspired you to go and make your own Do say thanks because it encourages And promotes small businesses which With again with the age of internet can really struggle because it's so easy to go and make your own thing rather to purchase Something an artist has made So I get this question a lot. So I like to address it a lot of people ask me, you know, I do stem cell research Why am I doing fashion technology at the same time? It's completely different, you know growing eyeballs and necks blinding people with lots of lights So I do this because I'm trying to live the best life that I can And I say this because This used to be my life You know, there I think a lot of you here you love your work and Like me, I feel very thankful to be doing something that is work, but I am passionate about But the thing is that For a lot of us Well myself specifically speaking from experience I loved it so much that I didn't think I need anything else I was like, you know, like this I'm doing life changing research Like none no either of my needs actually matter And when you're so passionate about something it's very very easy to neglect all your other needs So I Suffered from burnout over something that I love I also had severe anxiety and depression and I had no idea where they came from So being there a scientist that I am I did quite a bit of research into mental health Which is also work by the way And then I found out that Life requires balance, you know, you think you might not need it, but it makes life So much more colorful I after a full day of work I go home and I'm like, oh my god. I have this idea. I want to make You know, I'm not going home like oh, I'm so tired. You know, I have a really long day No, I'm going home. I'm skipping home. I'm like, yes, you know, I have this idea I want to make it real And this is why I've incorporated making into my life and why I think it's very important and I think that brings me to the end of my talk. Thank you very much Oh, yeah, sure. Uh, does anyone want to ask any questions? Yeah, I can repeat that How far have you got in making the eyeballs? We are actually making them right now In terms of growing eyeballs, it's quite special because they are They don't require a scaffold If you grow them in an in the right environment It forms its own optic viscicles so From a mess of cells it starts to Invaginate and form a little ball So eyes are pretty special. We are already there. We're just Trying to make sure that the cells we're working with are functional Any more questions? Um, great talk by the way. Thank you. Um, I was just wondering I think I saw that you sell kits online. Yes How easy is it to run a business as well as doing your making and your phc work and is it Is it worthwhile as it's sustainable and and is yeah, what's what's that kind of side of it like? Okay Yes, I am So as I said earlier, I'm selling those kits Which helps you create is this light up? It's meant to light up, but uh, it helps you create one of these little cat ears Yes, I do run a business. It is tough because It's just me So I am the marketing the packaging the posting the Everything the design and all that is just me um It can be difficult but With everything being online. It's a lot easier. You don't have to have a proper shop You know when orders come in you can just say that everything's going out on this specific day And people are willing to wait for your product if it's something that they really want Um, and just so you know, there is a cyberpunk marketplace later on in the evening And I will also have a shop there. So if you guys would like to check it out. Yeah Uh, any more questions? Um, how closely to actually implanting the eyeballs in people Um, it's actually happening right now a lot of the research with tissue engineering Um, a lot of times it is happening to patients who are in extreme circumstances So it is a trial, but it has been very successful. So for my masters, uh, my lab and I created a Tissue engineer oisophagus, which is the track that allows you to um, take food And it has been published. Um, and the follow-up of the patient is very successful And this patient is a child So we were amazed to see that the transplanted organ was growing with the child All right, uh, this question Do you think there'll be a point in the future where your hobby crosses over with your career and you kind of have like technology Incorporated into the organs um, it is I do get that question a lot and I don't really want them to cross Like it is sort of the main reason why I'm doing two very different things Um, yeah, I do get that question a lot and there's a possibility that um The fashion tech side of things might actually grow bigger and that might become part of my career And so I will have to find a way to build my own lab to grow my own organs, I guess Okay, so, uh, should the problem why our organ is being replaced if it's genetic Wouldn't the replacement organ also be prone to the same problem? Um, the answer is no, uh, so so as we know the problem with um, organ donors is not only because there is it's very limited Um, there's very there's a very long queue for organ donors, you know, and it's also very limited in the sense that you have to match your DNA So the the reason why we are engineering organs in the lab is because When you strip an organ like so we can use scaffolds from animal organs or an organ that is no longer fresh freshly harvested from a cadaver um These organs are stripped off its cells and DNA So the remaining extracellular matrix Is just a matrix that has no, um properties that will cause organ rejection So when we see these these extracellular matrix with the patient's own cells, we are essentially growing the patient's own organ Yeah, that's what I meant like, uh, if the patient is predisposed genetically to a disorder Would that same disorder be in the like grown organ? Yeah, so this is where gene editing comes in. So one of the things that I do in my lab is gene editing because we have um, so I have patients with congenital blindness So in order for us to address this issue and to grow their own eyes We have to firstly correct it by using a CRISPR-Cas9, which is a gene editing tool And through that we try to correct that um that gene that is producing the wrong thing And through that once it's corrected, we again have to test whether the cells work functionally Whether the eye cells can detect light and then before transplanting and yeah Any more questions I want to sit down so people can't see Um, obviously you talked you talked earlier about picamix And just now with gene engineering. So how do you address the morality of custom-building organs? And potentially people being able to custom-build characteristics that they particularly want within their stem cell organs Hello, hello, there we go Hi, sorry about the technical issue So in terms of picamix we would ideally like to change certain things depending on the lifestyle of the patient So, uh, and we would change that in terms of growth factors. So we will actually have to study It better in terms of human development I hope that answers the question We can speak more Thank you everyone