Latest news with #Prolific
Time Out
14 hours ago
- Sport
- Time Out
This Chicago stadium is the top bucket-list destination for U.S. sports fans
Chicagoans take baseball seriously—fans stay fans, even during the Chicago Cubs' 108-year championship drought, taking the moniker 'loveable losers' out of everyone's mouths. Cheering at a game at the famous Wrigley Field on the North Side of Chicago is an experience you're not soon to forget. From rooftop stadium seats on neighborhood buildings to the unique ivy-covered brick outfield wall, from the massive hand-turned scoreboard to the classic red marquee hanging over the main entrance, it's easy to see how Wrigley Field became a designated National Historic Landmark. And now there's a nationwide study that reveals a fact that locals have always known: Wrigley Field is the ultimate bucket-list destination for American sports fans. Last month, Deadspin polled 2,000 sports enthusiasts across the nation to determine what banger experiences across the globe are travel-worthy. Edging out Boston's Fenway Park, the oldest Major League Baseball stadium, Chicago's Wrigley Field—the MLB's second eldest venue—has earned the number one spot. Utilizing the research platform Prolific, Deadspin cast a wide net, including respondents living in the U.S. who would consider themselves sports fans. This online survey set out to determine which sports destinations fans most want to visit in their lifetime. What did the poll determine? Out of all of the sports destinations across the globe, fans have determined that the top five spots are located in the U.S. Wrigley Field earned number one, followed by world-famous venues including Fenway Park in Boston, Yankee Stadium and Madison Square Garden in New York City, and Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Other international stadiums in England, Japan, Spain, Italy, Australia, and Germany netted coveted spots in the top 25. Along with those dream sport venues, the study also revealed the top 10 sporting events that fans have on their bucket lists: unsurprisingly, the Super Bowl claimed the number one spot, followed by the men's FIFA World Cup, the World Series, the Olympic Games and the College Football Playoff National Championship. Here are fans' ultimate bucket-list sports destinations by state: Alabama: AT&T Stadium, Arlington, Texas Arizona: Yankee Stadium, New York City, New York Arkansas: Wrigley Field, Chicago, Illinois California: Fenway Park, Boston, Massachusetts Colorado: Lambeau Field, Green Bay, Wisconsin Connecticut: Madison Square Garden, New York City, New York Delaware: Wembley Stadium, London, England Florida: Wimbledon, London, England Georgia: Yankee Stadium, New York City, New York Idaho: Yankee Stadium, New York City, New York Illinois: Fenway Park, Boston, Massachusetts Indiana: Rose Bowl, Pasadena, California Iowa: Lambeau Field, Green Bay, Wisconsin Kansas: Wrigley Field, Chicago, Illinois Kentucky: Fenway Park, Boston, Massachusetts Louisiana: Yankee Stadium, New York City, New York Maine: Wembley Stadium, London, England Maryland: Wimbledon, London, England Massachusetts: Wrigley Field, Chicago, Illinois Michigan: Wrigley Field, Chicago, Illinois Minnesota: Fenway Park, Boston, Massachusetts Mississippi: Lambeau Field, Green Bay, Wisconsin Missouri: Yankee Stadium, New York City, New York Nebraska: Old Trafford, Manchester, England Nevada: Fenway Park, Boston, Massachusetts New Hampshire: Wrigley Field, Chicago, Illinois New Jersey: Lambeau Field, Green Bay, Wisconsin New York: Wembley Stadium, London, England North Carolina: Yankee Stadium, New York City, New York Ohio: Wrigley Field, Chicago, Illinois Oklahoma: Yankee Stadium, New York City, New York Oregon: Wrigley Field, Chicago, Illinois Pennsylvania: Fenway Park, Boston, Massachusetts South Carolina: Madison Square Garden, New York City, New York South Dakota: Wimbledon, London, England Tennessee: Lambeau Field, Green Bay, Wisconsin Texas: AT&T Stadium, Arlington, Texas Utah: Wrigley Field, Chicago, Illinois Virginia: Yankee Stadium, New York City, New York Washington: Fenway Park, Boston, Massachusetts
Business Wire
21-05-2025
- Business
- Business Wire
Prolific Machines Selected to Join FDA's Emerging Technology Program, Advancing the Company's Novel Biomanufacturing Platform
EMERYVILLE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Prolific Machines, a biotechnology company revolutionizing biologics manufacturing, announced today that it has been accepted into the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) Emerging Technology Program. This highly competitive program supports the development of innovative technologies that have the potential to transform therapeutics manufacturing. "This is a testament to the potential of our technology to unlock cheaper, faster, and higher quality protein production, particularly for difficult-to-produce therapeutics." Share Prolific Machines' selection by the FDA recognizes the novelty and promise of its Photomolecular Platform as a way to enhance biopharmaceutical manufacturing for many new and existing types of biologics. Prolific believes that 10-30% of promising novel, often more complex, targets are abandoned in early discovery due to their complexity. Complex therapeutics are expected to make up a significant share of the drug development pipeline in the near-future — up to 40% by 2030. Prolific believes its technology offers a potent solution for these types of manufacturing challenges. "We are honored to be accepted into the FDA's Emerging Technology Program," said Deniz Kent, PhD, CEO & Co-Founder, Prolific Machines. "This is a testament to the potential of our technology to unlock cheaper, faster, and higher quality protein production, particularly for difficult-to-produce therapeutics. We look forward to working closely with the FDA to advance our platform and make more therapies accessible to patients sooner and cheaper." The company's platform offers a novel approach to cellular control, utilizing light-control to revolutionize protein production. Its technology offers precise, efficient, and scalable solutions for biopharmaceutical manufacturing to solve biopharma's most complex protein manufacturing challenges, maximize titer and protein consistency and quality. Prolific recently completed the world's largest demonstration of optogenetics at 200L-scale in a stainless steel bioreactor. About Prolific Machines Prolific Machines is redefining biologics manufacturing, offering solutions from benchtop to pre-clinical scale. Founded in 2020, the Bay Area company's pioneering Photomolecular platform brings together advanced optogenetic tools and proprietary closed-loop control capabilities to solve major protein production challenges for early-stage biotechnology and leading pharmaceutical partners. The company is on a mission to create a healthier, more sustainable tomorrow and is supported by leading investors, including Ki Tua Fund, the corporate venture arm of the Fonterra Co-operative Group; Breakthrough Energy Ventures; Mayfield; SOSV; In-Q-Tel; and others. To learn more, visit And to qualify for a risk-free manufacturability assessment, or to become a research partner, contact partners@
Business Wire
15-05-2025
- Business
- Business Wire
Prolific Machines Appoints Former Catalent Chief Scientific Officer to Board of Directors
EMERYVILLE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Prolific Machines, the Photomolecular platform leader, today announced the appointment of Julien Meissonnier, former Chief Scientific Officer of Catalent, to its Board as an Independent Director. Meissonnier will leverage his more than 26 years of deep pharmaceutical and life science services expertise to help leading life science innovators leverage Prolific Machines' platform and its expertise. "With the right strategy, investment, innovation, and partnership culture, Prolific stands to be a leading accelerator of biopharma innovation, and I look forward to working with the Board, Deniz and the Prolific team to make this happen." Prolific Machines is leveraging advanced optogenetic technology and artificial intelligence to revolutionize protein production and offer precise, efficient, and scalable solutions for biopharmaceutical manufacturing. The Bay Area company's Photomolecular platform provides direct and dynamic control over any cellular function, in any cell type, to solve biopharma's most complex protein and viral vector manufacturing challenges, maximize titer and provide more consistent quality for biotherapies. Prolific recently completed the world's largest demonstration of optogenetics at 200L scale. 'We are well positioned to deliver impactful solutions to both early-stage biotechs and Big Pharma. Julien's pharma services experience will further accelerate our ability to do this,' said Deniz Kent, Ph.D., Prolific Machines' Co-Founder and CEO. 'I'm particularly excited about using light-based control to manufacture difficult-to-produce biotherapeutics, and I would encourage asset owners with this problem to reach out to us.' Meissonnier brings nearly three decades of leadership in biopharmaceuticals and life science services to Prolific Machines' Board. Most recently, he served as CSO of Catalent, a leading contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO), where he was responsible for global product development and was a lead contributor to the company's strategic investment in and growth of services for new therapeutic modalities. Through offering novel and targeted development excellence, and drug delivery and manufacturing solutions to accelerate life science innovations, Meissonnier was instrumental in establishing Catalent as one of the largest, most impactful, and fastest-growing pharma services organizations. He is currently an independent advisor to life science investors and innovators. 'Having helped build and scale Catalent's CDMO services and capabilities over two decades, I am excited to support Prolific in leveraging its groundbreaking technology to enable some of the most complex yet promising biotherapeutics in today's development pipeline and ultimately, help them reach clinic,' said Meissonnier. 'With the right strategy, investment, innovation, and partnership culture, Prolific stands to be a leading accelerator of biopharma innovation and I look forward to working with the Board, Deniz and the Prolific team to make this happen.' About Prolific Machines Prolific Machines is redefining biologics manufacturing, offering solutions from benchtop to pre-clinical scale. Founded in 2020, the Bay Area company's pioneering Photomolecular platform brings together advanced optogenetic tools and proprietary closed-loop control capabilities to solve major protein production challenges for early-stage biotechnology and leading pharmaceutical partners. The company is on a mission to create a healthier, more sustainable tomorrow and is supported by leading investors, including Ki Tua Fund, the corporate venture arm of the Fonterra Co-operative Group; Breakthrough Energy Ventures; Mayfield; SOSV; In-Q-Tel; and others. To learn more, visit And to qualify for a risk-free manufacturability assessment, or to become a research partner, contact partners@
Business Insider
07-05-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
I have a side hustle training AI and reviewing online ads. Some tasks are random, but as a mom, I love the flexibility.
This as-told-to essay is based on interviews with Brook, a 46-year-old freelance data worker and mom from Michigan. Business Insider has verified her work history. This essay has been edited for clarity and length. I've been doing behind-the-scenes tech work since 2006 — before most people had heard the word "AI." I started as a freelance crowd worker on Amazon Mechanical Turk, doing tasks like tagging photos, transcribing business cards, filing receipts, and checking if websites worked. Since then, the work has really changed, and lots of new platforms have popped up as AI has become more in demand. Now, I do everything from training AI voice assistants and labeling harmful social media content to rewriting chatbot responses and recording speech. I've never had a full-time job doing this. I'm a freelancer, a mom of young kids, and a school board member in Michigan. I've used platforms like MTurk, Appen, Neevo, Prolific, and Data Annotation, among others. Some projects or tasks pay as much as $40 an hour, but these are hard to come by and can be really competitive to get on. This isn't my main source of income, like it is for other people in the AI gig work space. It's money for extras like birthday gifts and groceries. I work when I can, usually a couple of hours at night after my kids go to bed. If there's good work available, I try to take it, as you never know when a project will disappear. The flexibility is what keeps me coming back. I spent 3 years mystery shopping Facebook ads There are a bunch of random tasks that pop up here and there. I worked on a mystery shopping project for nearly three years, where I was paid to buy stuff from Facebook ads and report on the quality of the product, whether it was legitimate and matched what the ad had promised. I'd log into a dashboard, see an ad, and be told, "Purchase this if you can." I could only skip a product if it was illegal, the ad was fraudulent, or it was a subscription. I didn't get to choose what I bought. There was a $150 spending cap per product. I was reimbursed for all the items I bought and paid $5 per review. On average, I worked around four hours a month — two hours purchasing, two hours writing reviews, and reviewed around eight products each month. I received thousands of dollars in goods. I ordered all kinds of things: wigs, skincare, Shein clothing, wall art, shoes, sunglasses, and supplements. Some of it was decent — I still use a Bluetooth speaker and a patio deck box I bought through the task. I'd occasionally land a designer item: authentic Birkenstock sandals, Adidas sneakers, even Ray-Bans. I kept about half of what I ordered. Lots of what arrived wasn't great, and I got rid of it straight away. Some products were low-quality knockoffs. Others would arrive broken or in weird sizes. I skipped about half the ads I was shown. Some websites were sketchy — spelling errors, no contact info, scammy-looking payment portals. I saved spreadsheets of everything I bought — five to nine items a month for three years. That's a lot of mystery boxes at my door. The project ended abruptly in February 2024. I just logged in one day, and it wasn't there anymore. I was surprised it had lasted as long as it did. Compared to other gigs, it was low-stakes and kind of fun I've done a lot of different jobs in this space, and mystery shopping felt simple by comparison. It didn't pay much but was steady and easy to manage. When work is really good on one platform, I'll concentrate on that. If work dries up, I move on to my next most successful one, and keep a rotation going. Some of the better-paying work has been voice projects. One had me say hundreds of phrases into a microphone to get it to recognise regional accents, to help train voice assistants like Alexa or Siri. Prolific — a platform where you can get paid for completing academic surveys from universities, researchers, or data labelling tasks — has been one of the more consistent platforms lately. It pays between $10 to $15 an hour, but the actual wage can fluctuate. I've done data annotation projects on Prolific that pay $28 an hour, though those are less common and can be competitive. Not every offer is worth taking. I've seen projects on some platforms asking workers to install cameras at their front door or wear a pair of smart glasses to provide training data for AI systems. Some ask for at-home videos or selfies sometimes used to train AI facial recognition tools. Some of these come with waivers you have to sign promising that no children will appear in the footage. I don't take those jobs. I mostly stick to what feels reasonable — writing prompts, reviewing, chatbot training, voice work, and data annotating. I'd rather not add my face or living room to these systems, as it feels invasive. For me, it's not about making a full-time income. I just do it when I have time. I like doing this work with young kids because I can go to their events and not worry about being on my computer at a specific time. That kind of flexibility is hard to find anywhere else.
Yahoo
17-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Prolific Machines Announces the Completion of Optogenetic Bioproduction at 200L, Marking the World's Largest Demonstration of Optogenetics to Date
The 200-liter run is also the first demonstration of optogenetics in a stainless-steel bioreactor. The milestone highlights the company's ability to deliver optogenetics benefits to biopharma partners at commercial scale. This capability accelerates Prolific's ability to solve significant protein production challenges as it expands its roster of light-controlled manufacturability offerings. EMERYVILLE, Calif., April 17, 2025--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Prolific Machines, the Photomolecular platform leader, announced the world's largest demonstration of optogenetics to date. The 200-liter run was completed at Prolific's Emeryville, CA pilot production facilities by the company's expert team of bioprocessing, optogenetic, hardware, and machine learning experts. Not only does this mark a significant scientific achievement, but supports Prolific's ability to deliver commercial-scale biomanufacturing solutions to prospective partners, from early-stage biotechs to leading pharmaceutical makers. The production run also showcases the ability of Prolific's light-inducible expression systems to precisely and reversibly control gene expression in mammalian cells. This presents a critical advantage for biologics manufacturing, especially with difficult-to-produce candidates. A Prolific-designed, plug-and-play illumination system was used to precisely control cellular activation with light. The company will continue to develop its closed-loop control systems to continuously monitor and adjust cellular activation based on real-time data. This data will also be used to determine optimal future run parameters. "We started Prolific in 2020 driven by the deep belief that light is the best way to control biology. Less than five years later, thanks to our incredible team, we are not only proving that this is true, but demonstrating that it is possible at scale," said Deniz Kent, PhD, Prolific Machine's Co-Founder & CEO. "This 200-liter milestone is really just the beginning. We are enabling a more efficient and effective biomanufacturing future driven by Prolific's driverless bioreactors. The key is creating a shared language between the machines and the cells, which is light. We believe we can bring the same level of autonomy to biomanufacturing that driverless vehicles have brought to the automotive industry." The run is yet another major step taken by Prolific to commercialize molecular optogenetics, a novel technology that uses light-sensitive proteins to drive cellular behavior. These photoreceptors are sourced from light-sensitive organisms found in nature, like plants or bacteria, and are engineered into a target cell line to control any biological function. By delivering light in specific patterns, intensities, and wavelengths, Prolific can obtain precise and dynamic cellular control across any cell type. "Not only have we transferred the ability to control cellular function with light from the research lab to commercial applications, we have now done this at scale," said Maximilian Hoerner, PhD, Prolific Machine's Head of Optogenetics and a former PI in the space. "The implications for this are significant as we work to manufacture previously unproducible biologics candidates for partners and accelerate their ability to bring these to clinic." About Prolific Machines Prolific Machines is redefining biologics manufacturing, offering solutions from benchtop to manufacturing scale. Founded in 2020, the Bay Area company's pioneering Photomolecular platform brings together advanced optogenetic tools and proprietary closed-loop control capabilities to solve major protein production challenges for early-stage biotechnology and leading pharmaceutical partners. The company is on a mission to create a healthier, more sustainable tomorrow and is supported by leading investors, including Ki Tua Fund, the corporate venture arm of the Fonterra Co-operative Group; Breakthrough Energy Ventures; Mayfield; SOSV; In-Q-Tel; and others. Visit to learn more, and contact partners@ to qualify for a risk-free manufacturability assessment. View source version on Contacts Media ContactNicki Briggs, MS, RDNVP, Communicationscomms@ Sign in to access your portfolio
