FreakTakes

FreakTakes

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Building a “Convergent Research for BBNs”
Jan 16 • Eric Gilliam
A Scrappy Complement to FROs: Building More BBNs
ARPA’s early decades of success have made the ARPA model iconic.
Oct 15, 2024 • Eric Gilliam
A Report on Scientific Branch-Creation: How the Rockefeller Foundation helped bootstrap the field of molecular biology
This piece is noticeably longer (twice the length) than the others on this Substack.
Jan 12, 2023 • Eric Gilliam
How did places like Bell Labs know how to ask the right questions?
Alternative Title: Why all applied research organizations should hire a Bell-style systems engineer
Apr 20, 2023 • Eric Gilliam
A Progress Studies History of Early MIT — Part 1: Training the engineers who built the country
The MIT Series
Jul 28, 2022 • Eric Gilliam
BBNs Toward Universal Fabricators
A guest post by Ivan Jayapurna
Feb 19 • Eric Gilliam
An Applied Crop Genetics BBN
A guest post by Karen Sarkisyan
Jan 30 • Eric Gilliam
An Interview with Jano Costard, Head of Challenges at SPRIN-D
The Spotify version of today’s episode can be found at this link.
Jul 18, 2025 • Eric Gilliam
1:36:53
Wanted: New Instruments to Fund BBNs
A guest post by Alex Obadia
Jun 20, 2025 • Eric Gilliam and Alex Obadia
An Oral History Interview with ARIA CEO Ilan Gur
The Spotify version of today’s episode can be found at this link.
Jun 12, 2025 • Eric Gilliam
1:57:46
An Oral History Interview with ARIA CEO Ilan Gur [Transcript]
The full transcript accompanying today’s interview, for those who just want to read the interview, not watch/listen to it
Jun 12, 2025 • Eric Gilliam
My Appearance on the Foresight Institute Podcast
Where I discuss Bell Labs systems engineers, giving away $100 million like Warren Weaver, and more.
May 30, 2025 • Eric Gilliam
FreakTakes
FreakTakes
I want to help people start historically great labs. Operational histories on history's best R&D orgs.
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