Announcements

Congrats to our mentors for the Open Hardware Trailblazers in Academia Fellowship. Our mentors will be selecting the fellows (along with our board panel), guiding the fellows through our process, and reading the fellows’ work. We are super excited to have them on board and thank them for their commitment to open source hardware!

Mentors (in alphabetical order by first name):

Brandon Stafford

Brandon is an engineer who lives in Somerville, Massachusetts, USA. He grew up north of Boston and spent a lot of time building tree forts and skateboard ramps as an adolescent. After a degree in English and a few years of teaching high school math, Brandon went to grad school in mechanical engineering.

Since grad school, Brandon has worked at the Stanford Robotics Lab, Mindtribe Product Engineering, and as a consultant for various renewable energy startups. For five years, he ran Rascal Micro, a startup building small computers for art and science.

At Tufts, Brandon teaches hands-on courses in electronics (ME 30) and mechanical design (ME 93-DF).

César Garcia Saez

Bio: César García Sáez. Speaker and researcher specialized in digital fabrication, Internet of Things and maker movement.

Host at La Hora Maker, a podcast in Spanish focused on Maker Movement and digital fabrication. Co-founder of Makespace Madrid. FabAcademy graduate at Fablab León. Madrid Mini Maker Faire organizer. Co-founder of Madrid IoT meetup group. Exhibitor and speaker at European events like European Maker Faire, FabFestival (Toulouse). Author of the books “Digital Fabrication, maker movement and the future of work”, “We need to make (almost) everything – A social and education look at Fab Labs and the maker movement”.

Appointed by COTEC Foundation, focused on Innovation at a national scale, as Expert in 3D Printing for Societal and Economical impact. Mentor at European Social Innovation Challenge.

Before switching roles to my current position, I worked at System Administrator for 14+ years at Madrid City Council. I won the first ever intra-entrepreneurship innovation challenge for public workers in our city, using a design thinking approach.

Chris Chronopoulos

Bio: Chris serves as the Director of Instrumentation at the recently launched Allen Institute for Neural Dynamics, a non-profit research lab focused on fundamental neuroscience with a commitment to Open Science practices. In this role, he manages a team developing instrumentation hardware and software, ensuring that it meets the evolving needs of scientists while also adhering to open source standards, so to share tools widely in the spirit of scientific collaboration.

Chris is also president and board member of Interstitial Technology, a public benefit cooperative and consulting firm that develops open source technology as a force for good, with a focus on environmental sustainability and human rights. Through Interstitial, he has carried forward a number of hardware projects into OSHWA compliance, and also spoken at the Summit on the topic of Open Standards.

Before this, he was an engineering project manager at LeafLabs, which developed one of the first Arduino-compatible ARM dev boards (the Maple) in addition to subsequent open-hardware projects.

Clarissa Redwine

Bio: Clarissa is the Grant Program Manager for the Decentralized Wireless Alliance, leading ecosystem development. Before joining DeWi, she was a Fellow at NYU Law focused on open source hardware, led Kickstarter’s Design and Tech outreach strategy across the US, and served as Program Manager for the Qualcomm Robotics Accelerator.

Elizabeth Hendrex

Bio: Elizabeth Hendrex is the CEO of Great Scott Gadgets. Her leadership and hands-on approach help with financial oversight, process improvements, logistics coordination, and people management. She has been an integral part of helping GSG grow in its mission to put open source tools into the hands of innovative people since joining the team six years ago. Elizabeth received a Bachelor of Science degree in Technical Communication as a non-traditional (single parent, career-changing, working adult) student at Metro State University of Denver. She chose this path because of her interest in technical writing and aviation technology, and shortly after discovered a passion for open-source hardware that would become her career. When she’s not at her desk, she’s probably driving the kids around, practicing yoga, watering the orchids, or learning a new song on the guitar or keyboard.

Huaishu Peng

Bio: Huaishu Peng is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science department at the University of Maryland, College Park. His multi-disciplinary research interests range from human-computer interaction, mixed reality, and robotic fabrication. He builds software and machine prototypes that make the design and fabrication of 3D models interactive. He also looks into new techniques that can fabricate 3D interactive objects. His work has been published in CHI, UIST and SIGGRAPH and won Best Paper Nominee. His work has also been featured in media such as Wired, MIT Technology Review, Techcrunch, and Gizmodo.

Jinger Zeng

Bio: Jinger Zeng is currently the contest manager at Hackster.io. Prior to joining Hackster, she was the community manager of the PX4 open source drones community, and the founder of hardware company Dronesmith Technologies. She is an active advocate in the open hardware space, and have a wide range of experiences in working with different stages of companies from startups to corporates, academia, manufactures, and organized events from meetups to developer summits. 

Joshua Pearce

Bio: Joshua M. Pearce received his Ph.D. in Materials Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University. He then developed the first Sustainability program in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education and helped develop the Collaborative Applied Sustainability graduate engineering program while at Queen’s University, Canada. Then he was the first Richard Witte Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and a Professor cross-appointed in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the Michigan Technological University where he inaugurated and was the faculty advisor for the Michigan Tech Open Source Hardware Enterprise and ran the Open Sustainability Technology Research Group. He was a Fulbright-Aalto University Distinguished Chair and is a visiting professor of Photovoltaics and Nanoengineering at Aalto University as well as a visiting Professor Équipe de Recherche sur les Processus Innovatifs (ERPI), Université de Lorraine, France. He  is the John M. Thompson Chair in Information Technology and Innovation at the Thompson Centre for Engineering Leadership & Innovation. He holds appointments at Ivey Business School, the top ranked business school in Canada and the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Western University in Canada, a top 1% global university.

The Open Source Hardware Association ( OSHWA) recently announced our Open Hardware Trailblazers Fellowship. The one-year fellowship provides $50,000 or $100,000 grants to individuals who are leading the way as open source hardware expands into academia. The fellows will document their experience of making open source hardware in academia to create a library of resources for others to follow.

OSHWA is recruiting open source hardware professionals and practitioners from both inside and outside of academia with diverse backgrounds to serve on the mentor committee.  The committee will review applications, make recommendations on fellowship awards, and advise fellows through their year-long Open Hardware Trailblazers Fellowship.  The mentor committee will work with the OSHWA board selection committee, two non-voting members of the Sloan Foundation, and two non-voting staff members at OSHWA to recommend fellow applications. 

The mentor application is due March 30th.

Responsibilities

• Read, reflect on, and discuss the fellowship applications. 
• Work with the OSHWA selection committee members to recommend a list of applicants to the OSHWA board. 
• Attend virtual and in-person meetings through the course of this grant as determined as a group.
• Read the guidelines / best practices / case study or other documentation written by your fellow and offer suggestions throughout the year.
• Mentor, offer suggestions, and be a sounding board to a paired fellow throughout the year.

Process

The mentor application is due March 30th.

The mentor committee will be appointed by an OSHWA board selection committee. Mentors will be given a $5,000 stipend. Travel for proposed in-person personal meetings will be covered by OSHWA.

Thank you to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for their generous support of this program.

The open source hardware community has exploded since the first Open Hardware Summit way back in 2010.  In just over a decade we’ve seen open hardware in space and under the sea, hardware made of electronics and hardware made of yarn.  This growth has been fueled by the open source hardware community clustered in companies, nonprofits, basements, research organizations, and hackerspaces.  

Today, thanks to the generous support of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, OSHWA is taking a giant step towards expanding open source hardware in academia with our new Open Hardware Trailblazers Fellowship program.  The Fellowship is the culmination of the Higher Education program we announced at the 2020 Summit, and builds on the information we learned from the survey of the academic community in 2021. The program recognizes open source hardware community members as they succeed in academia, supporting them as they make it easier to follow their path.

The one year fellowship provides $50,000 or $100,000 grants to individuals who are leading the way as open source hardware expands into academia.  Documentation is key to open source hardware, and these Fellowships will support the development of documentation for how to successfully make open source hardware work across a broad spectrum of academic environments and departments.  

You will find the full RFP below.  The application form is here.  Fellowship applications are due April 7th, and this time are limited to applicants with a demonstrated record of success using or supporting open source hardware in US-based academic settings.  If you have questions, please email alicia@oshwa.org.

Request for Proposals: Open Hardware Trailblazers Fellowship

The Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA) invites applications to its Open Hardware Trailblazers Fellowship. The one year Fellowship provides $50k or $100k grants to individuals who are actively leading the development and application of open hardware within universities. The goals of the program are to recognize and connect a peer cohort of these leaders, and to create a library of resources representing best practices in open source hardware in academia. The Open Hardware Trailblazers Fellowship recognizes academic leaders in open hardware, providing support for those leaders to share how they have done their work, and supports the production of documentation and best practices to make it easier to expand open hardware at academic institutions more broadly. Fellowship applications are due April 7th.

Background and Approach

Open hardware is accelerating the pace of research in academic settings.  Three open hardware Journals have come of age in the past five years.  The Gathering for Open Science Hardware (GOSH) is transforming the development of open hardware scientific equipment.  Open hardware’s use in academia has become an area of study in and of itself.   

However, many academic institutions are not yet aware of open hardware techniques and do not actively support their adoption.  The Fellowship program will raise the profile of existing open hardware work within academia, and make it easier for others to take similar paths.

Applications should identify existing efforts to expand the use of open hardware within an academic setting, and outline proposals to grow and document those successes. OSHWA’s definition of success within the context of the Open Hardware Trailblazers Fellowship focuses on the academic context. While that can include commercial success, more relevant success is tied to professional advancement, awards and other recognition for contributions, or hardware created. We expect to fund meta-level research on hardware, but not the production of hardware directly.

Networks and communities can be helpful when embracing new territory.  Fellows will be part of a cohort, creating a network focused on growing institutional support and expanding the impact of individual projects. The Trailblazers Network is designed to:

1. Recognize existing leaders
2. Give those leaders tools to expand their work
3. Encourage the leaders’ institutions to recognize and value their work
4. Identify and accelerate the development and dissemination of information about developing open hardware within the context of universities 
5. Leverage diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice initiatives to broaden the community of open hardware practitioners at universities 
6. Pair leaders with industry mentors to share knowledge when applicable

What to expect if you’re accepted as a Fellow

The purpose of this funding is to give the Fellows the time needed to document their work with open source hardware in a way that allows others to adopt similar techniques. All Fellows will attend regular virtual meetings with their Fellowship cohort, including two in-person meetings with travel costs paid for by OSHWA. Fellows will be introduced to mentors or collaborators from industry with relevant expertise. The Fellowship will build a beneficial network to share work being done, ask questions, and gain feedback from each other. Each Fellow’s documentation will be a valuable piece of the resource library produced within this Fellowship. 

Example Questions and Outputs

Example questions that could be answered as part of the Fellowship include, but are not restricted to: 

• What documentation practices help academics share and disseminate their open hardware projects?
• What makes hardware more replicable in academia and what is missing from current documentation standards?  
• How do various fields of study approach problems, such as licensing, around open hardware in their departments and what are common threads seen at other academic institutions?
• What is the business case of open hardware in academia and how has open hardware developed in academia thus far?

Example outputs could include, but are not restricted to: 

• A guide or playbook for how a specific successful open hardware project was created in academia and lessons learned that can be extrapolated to Fellow academics. 
• A case study and blown out diagram to describe every piece of meta information that goes into the creation of open source hardware. 
• A case study of metrics that could be used by departments to determine a person’s contributions to open source hardware and how those might fit into service criteria
• A how-to guide for talking to tech transfer offices and deans about opening up IP for hardware

Fellowship funding is not intended to fund new technical development of individual hardware projects. Applications that ask for funding hardware development costs will not be funded. Furthermore, Fellowship funding is not intended to fund tools for developing hardware. Proposals for building tools such as documentation platforms will be considered out of scope.

Upon completion of this project, the work from the Fellowship will be compiled into a physical or digital library of resources which may include books, guides, instruction sets, maps, or diagrams. These resources will be disseminated more broadly to help people create and advocate for open hardware at their academic institution. 

We welcome applications from individuals affiliated with all kinds of departments and institutions ranging from Engineering to Arts and Sciences to Business Schools, and from R1s to primarily undergraduate institutions. 

Fellowship applications can cover the costs for multiple people working together as teams, but each application must specify a lead Fellow. For example, we imagine that Fellows might be faculty but that the Fellowship will fund work conducted by students.

Eligibility

Open source hardware’s diversity is one of its strengths.  As such, we encourage applicants to interpret “projects related to open source hardware” broadly and creatively. OSHWA defines open hardware broadly, and invites applications from non-engineering or -science disciplines.  People who are eligible to hold funds at their academic institution are eligible to apply to this Fellowship. We have attempted to make the initial application process relatively brief in order to encourage experimentation.

That being said, applicants should have a demonstrated record of success in the use and/or support of open source hardware in academic settings.  They do not need to be project leads, however, they do have to be in a position of leadership sufficient to develop and implement the proposed project. Since this program is designed to help create examples for others to follow, we also value a demonstrated interest in mentoring or other types of community leadership.  We recognize that opportunities for community leadership are not equally distributed and therefore understand that term broadly.  

By applying, applicants are indicating that they have the time and capacity to implement their proposed program, participate in regular Fellow cohort meetings, and document their work so that it can serve as a guide to others. Applicants are also indicating that they understand that all work created as part of this program will be made publicly available under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 license, or a similarly permissive license, and open hardware referenced meets the guidelines set forth in OSHWA’s Open Hardware Definition.

Awards will be disbursed as unrestricted gifts to the academic institution and are not intended for overhead or indirect costs. OSHWA expects the main expenditures will be allocated to personnel.

Apply!

Applicants should use this form to submit their initial applications. OSHWA will then invite finalists to present a more detailed proposal. For questions or additional information, please email alicia@oshwa.org.

OSHWA believes that the open source hardware community is strengthened by its diversity and, as such, encourages people of color, women, the LGBTQIA+ community, persons with disabilities, and people at intersections of these identities, from across the spectrum of disciplines and methods, to apply.

Estimated Timeline 

• Application Deadline: April 7th
• May 2022: Fellows are selected and awards are announced
• June 2022: Initial in-person Fellow meeting
• August 2022: Fellows present on their in-progress research
• November 2022: In-person Fellow meeting with cohort
• December 2022: Fellows present on their in-progress research
• May 2023: Final presentation of research outcomes

FAQ

How long do we have to conduct the research?

The Fellowship is a one year program.

How many grants are being awarded?

Eight in total: Five $100,000 grants and three $50,000 grants.

Who can receive the $50,000 grant vs. the $100,000 grant?

If you meet the requirements sent forth in the Eligibility section of this RFP, you are eligible for either amount. We expect Fellows given $100,000 will have longer or multiple outputs. 

Can I use this for summer salary?

Yes.

I’m a postdoc, can I apply?

Yes, if you are able to receive academic institution funds, or partner with someone who can. 

I’m at a community college, can I apply?

Yes, as long as you are able to hold funds at your community college.

Can I use this to make this [really cool hardware project]?

No, but you can use these funds to document how you were able to make a project open source.

I have an open hardware project that isn’t completed, can I apply?

Yes, but keep in mind that funding is not intended for hardware development. 

I would like to use the Fellowship to manufacture existing hardware, distribute it, and then evaluate how it is used by others in a way that would advance open hardware in academia, is that okay?

Yes, this is acceptable, as long as the primary contribution of your work is the evaluation and advancement of open hardware in academia. 

Can I apply for the funding with a partner at my or another institution?

We encourage you and your partner both to apply for the Fellowship separately, but you can mention that you’re hoping to partner with another institution.

I am based at an institution outside of the United States. Can I apply?

After careful consideration, we have limited the first round of the Trailblazers Fellowship program to US-based institutions.  

This was not a decision we made lightly.  OSHWA is an international organization for the international open source hardware community.  Our goal is to be able to extend this program to members of our community around the world.

However, the Trailblazers Fellowship is also a new program for OSHWA that involves coordinating a number of people and institutions in ways that we have not done before.  We hope that limiting the first round of the program to US-based institutions will make it easier for us to learn and be well positioned to expand the program in the future.

I have another question! Where can I ask it?

Email Alicia Gibb at alicia@oshwa.org with any further questions.

I’m interested in being a mentor instead, how do I do that?

Please view our mentor committee post here. Applications to mentor will be due March 30th.

Thank You

Thank you for taking the time to consider this Fellowship. 

Thank you to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for the program funding to make the Open Hardware Trailblazers Fellowship possible. 

The Open Hardware Association surveyed members of the academic community in 2021 to determine how OSHWA can best serve that community. Thanks very much to S Wu from CU-Boulder who volunteered to analyze the results of the survey. The original survey questions can be viewed here. The survey is still open for those who wish to give feedback.

View the survey analysis here.

We’re pleased to share the 2022 Open Hardware Summit tickets are now available on our event page! The summit will be held virtually on April 22. We’re particularly excited this year, although the summit is virtual, we have a stellar keynote speaker Ashley Jane Lewis, and art in the goodie bag by Dushan Milic. Here’s a sneak peek of what OSHWA is putting in the bag:

The Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA) is looking for a Program Coordinator to assist with a new program designed to engage open hardware in academia. The new program will give grants to academics to document the process of creating successful open hardware projects in academia. The Program Coordinator will be responsible for assisting in building out the program, managing the day-to-day deadlines of grantees, answering questions, scheduling meetings, and generally facilitating the development of the network. Ideal candidates will have an understanding of academic operations, typical academic outputs, budgets, and open source hardware.  However, candidates do not need to be situated in academia.

OSHWA is a steward to the community of people who create, study, and use open source hardware. Open source hardware is hardware whose intellectual property is open rather than closed, i.e. patented. OSHWA is a US based 501(c)3 non-profit. OSHWA aims to foster technological knowledge and encourage research that is accessible, collaborative and respects user freedom. 

OSHWA believes that the open source hardware community is strengthened by its diversity and, as such, encourages people of color, women, the LGBTQIA+ community, persons with disabilities, and people at intersections of these identities, from across the spectrum of disciplines and methods, to apply for this position. 

Responsibilities:

• Coordinate project management activities, resources, equipment, and information
• Help grantees break projects into doable actions and set timeframes 
• Make sure needs of grantees and industry partners are met as projects evolve
• Monitor project progress and handle any issues that arise
• Act as the point of contact and communicate project status to all participants
• Familiarity with hardware
• Manage all appropriate legal paperwork (e.g. contracts and terms of agreement)
• Track and maintain comprehensive project documentation, plans, and reports
• Assist with schedule and travel management
• Use tools to monitor working hours, plans, and expenditures

Required Qualifications:

• BA in business management, or work experience as a Program Coordinator or similar role
• Good communication skills
• Interpersonal and listening skills
• Ability to think broadly about the project, but be able to scope objectives and define requirements
• Can guide our grantees to successful completion of their projects
• Eligible to work on a contract basis with a US-based nonprofit organization

Nice to have Qualifications:

• Well organized
• Excellent time management skills
• Problem solver
• Understanding of Academic Budgets/Grants
• Works autonomously

Application Process:

• To apply, please fill out this form and send your CV with the subject line “Program Coordinator CV” to alicia@oshwa.org.  OSHWA will be receiving applications through Jan 28th, 2022.  We expect to conduct initial interviews by Feb 11th and final interviews by Feb 22nd.  A hiring committee of OSHWA board members and OSHWA’s Executive Director will conduct all interviews. We aim to fill this position by March 1st. Any questions can be directed at alicia@oshwa.org.

Other Information:

• This can be a fully remote position.  Preference will be given to applicants working in or adjacent to US time zones.
• The program coordinator will report directly to the Executive Director.
• The application deadline is Jan 28th, 2022.  We expect to conduct initial interviews by Feb 11th and final interviews by Feb 22nd.  The ideal start date for the candidate is March 1st. 

Compensation:

This is a contract-based part-time position.  Candidates should expect to commit 20 hours per week for a period of one calendar year.  Expected start date is March 1st, 2022 and the contract would end March of 2023. Compensation is $40,000 for that period.

OSHWA is an Equal Opportunity Employer. OSHWA is committed to a policy of equal treatment and opportunity in every aspect of its hiring and promotion process without regard to race, color, creed, religion, sex, pregnancy or childbirth (or related medical condition), sexual orientation, partnership status, gender and/or gender identity or expression, marital, parental or familial status, caregiver status, national origin, ethnicity, alienage or citizenship status, veteran or military status, age, disability, predisposing genetic characteristics, domestic violence victim status, unemployment status, or any other legally protected basis. Women, racial and ethnic minorities, persons of minority sexual orientation or gender identity, individuals with disabilities, and veterans are encouraged to apply for vacant positions at all levels.

If you require an alternative method of submission, such as a video, contact alicia@oshwa.org.

Today we are releasing a new resolution to replace the problematic Master/Slave SPI terminology. We are recommending using the terms PICO (Peripheral In, Controller Out) and POCI (Peripheral Out, Controller In). You can view our original blog post on reasoning to move away from the Master/Slave terminology here. This change is the result of research done by OSHWA and guided by industry leaders and stakeholders to change the resolution to use PICO/POCI going forward.  You can read the new resolution here.

This is an important update to replace an earlier resolution with terms C*PO and COPI as a move away from MOSI/MISO.  After publishing the resolution containing C*PO and COPI, it was brought to OSHWA’s attention that one of those acronyms is an offensive term in Polish. Our initial review of the options did not identify this problem.  Therefore, we are moving to update the terms to PICO and POCI.  We conducted a broader language review and included more industry leaders and community stakeholders when considering PICO/POCI.

What we did and how we did it:

After being alerted to problems with MOSI/MISO, the OSHWA board consulted with various stakeholders and industry leaders.  Those discussions made it clear that we needed to choose a better term. We took six months to gather advice from industry leaders, community members, and other stakeholders and another six months to investigate the terms PICO and POCI. This included:

• Checking the terms separately and together
• Testing the terms in the word safety database, which checks 19 languages with phonetic matching
• Testing the terms in Google Translate, which provides AI-assisted translations in 108 languages that cover 3.8 billion speakers 
• Testing potential concerns in Bengali, Bulgarian, Chilean Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin, and Portuguese with native speakers or translators, all of whom confirmed there were no problematic concerns.

While these efforts can never be complete, we believe they have been sufficiently vigorous to give us confidence that PICO and POCI are viable for the future. 

Once the review was complete, the OSHWA board took all the research into consideration and determined PICO/POCI was the recommended path forward.  OSHWA drafted the resolution and circulated it to the initial endorsees for endorsement.  

We invite you to review and endorse the resolution. To endorse the new SPI Resolution, please email info@oshwa.org with “I endorse the Resolution to Redefine SPI Signal Names”

Thank you to each and every one of you for making the decision to be transparent, share your designs, and be a part of the open hardware ecosystem. We appreciate your hard work and dedication to open source hardware. 

At OSHWA, we remain invested in our principles: organizing events; educating the public about open source hardware and its socially beneficial uses; organizing the movement around shared values and principles; collecting, compiling and publishing data on the Open Source Hardware movement; and providing a way for creators to indicate that their products meet a standard for open-source compliance.

If you would like to support these initiatives and vote on who is on the OSHWA board, please consider getting an OSHWA membership. We have a wide range of membership levels, including a new lifetime membership tier: buy once and you’ll never have to renew your membership again. Membership not for you? That’s ok! We also welcome, and greatly appreciate, donations and Open Hardware Summit sponsorships! 

As always, we welcome feedback and would love to hear your thoughts on OSHWA and what you would like us to focus on during the next year. If you are interested in reaching out to us, please email us at info@oshwa.org. 

OSHWA

Welcome to the following 2021-2023 board members! Congrats to Nadya Peek, Katherine Scott, Wendy Ju and Mirela Alistar. Thank you to all OSHWA members who voted, your vote is important – we had quorum! Here are the results: