About "Backyard Brains"

As grad students at University of Michigan, co-founders Tim and Greg often interacted with schoolchildren during neuroscience outreach events. We often wanted to show real "spiking" activity to students, but this was impossible due to the high cost of equipment. By combining invertebrate preparations with off-the-shelf electronics, we designed a kit that could provide insight into the inner workings of the body, specifically the brain.

Our first product, the Spikerbox, is available now for purchase. We also launched our second product, the RoboRoach which is currently in beta.

Thank you for your interest in Backyard Brains.

Contact Us

Email: info@backyardbrains.com or sales@backyardbrains.com
Post: P.O. Box 4573, Ann Arbor, MI 48106
Fax: +1 (734) 527-5965

Our Customers

Where, oh where, have our little SpikerBoxes gone? Find out below. University professors are orange, grad students are brown, amateur scientists are yellow, and our high school teachers are in green. Unknown is red.

Our Finances

We are not only open-source, we are open books. Feel free to browse our cash flow at http://finance.backyardbrains.com.

Our Development Team

Greg Gage, Ph.D., Co-Founder and Engineer gagegreg@backyardbrains.com. Working on teams: Software, Electrical Engineering, Sales, Marketing

Tim Marzullo, Ph.D., Co-Founder and Engineer tim@backyardbrains.com. Working on teams: Invertebrate Physiology, Mechanical Engineering, Sales, Education

Nathan Dotz, Software Developer nate@backyardbrains.com. Working on teams: Software, Mechanical Engineering, General Hacking

Andre Snellings, Ph.D., Neural Engineer andre@backyardbrains.com. Working on teams: Education, Signal Analysis

Cristina Mezuk, Artist, Working on team: Jealous Illustration.

Teddy Morrow, Musician. Working on team: Production. All SpikerBoxes pass through his attentive hands.

Kyle Shannon, UCSD undergraduate student. Working on teams: Cognitive Science, Education. He spends his days wondering how to relate bug neurons to human neurons.

Jennifer Marzullo, Educator, Wife. Working on teams: Learning, Proposals, Fruit Fly Control

Edward Rantze, Financial Analyst and Engineer. Working on teams: Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Education. Evil genius. No product goes out without Ed's approval.

Susan Trigger, Lawyer, Mother-in-Law. Working on teams: real estate, compliance. Allowed Tim to convert her basement into a neuroscience lab stocked with multiple colonies of crickets, cockroaches, and fruit flies. Permitted RoboRoach tests on kitchen floor.

Our Santiago, Chile Advisors

Tiburcio De La Carcova, Veteran Hacker. Founder of Atakama Labs. Helping us launch our Manipulator Prototype and is building the first HackerSpace in Chile.

Matías Gutiérrez, Biologist, Master of Distribution. Founder of Bioquimica.cl. Teaching us the correct way to distribute the science.

Daniel Silva, Biochemist, Linguist. Converting our Experiments a español.

Alumni

Alex Wiltschko, Software Engineer and Harvard Grad Student. Developed our first iPhone application. Makes scientists everywhere jealous of his neuroscience and coding skillz.

Ashton Powell, Ph.D., Neuroscientist and High School Educator. Worked on teams: Education, Invertebrate Physiology.

Grant Trigger, Lawyer, Hobbyist, Father-in-Law. Worked on teams: Mechanical Engineering. Helped make our enclosures much easier to produce. Converted garage into small machine shop.

Zachary King, UCSD Graduate Student and Software Engineer, Worked on team: Brilliant Code.

Above: Our Michigan Team working for you (November 2011).

Above: Inventors, Greg (left) and Tim (right), thinking or maybe. (photo by Hirak Parikh, December 2010)