Podcast
The Lab Man Podcast affords you the monthly opportunity to download an audio file at your leisure. While The Lab Man Podcast will be brief in form ranging from three-to-five minutes, its function will be to offer a glimpse of interesting and significant questions, answers and ideas emanating from the discussion board in any particular month. The Lab Man also will acknowledge and thank leading contributors as well as members of our volunteer scientific experts.
This Month's Podcast
The Knowledge Network worth your right arm!
Undoubtedly you know by now about LabAutopedia. One of our readers says it's a resource he'd have given his right arm for back when he started his instrument project. He's a lefty! Listen to a behind-the-scenes report about the creation of the wiki from one of the team.
Podcast Archive
"Have it your way" software
Have you ever found that the software provided with your laboratory automation systems didn't quite fit your needs? What if there existed "open source" lab automation software, written by the community of users, which you could freely modify to meet your specific needs? The same open source concept has led to the quite successful Linux operating system. Could the same happen in our field? Neil Benn thinks so.
Ethics and technology
What if you determined that your employer was more interested in corporate profits vs. informing the public about the possible health risks of their product? Would you feel that the public ought to look out for themselves, and quietly keep doing your job? Would you try to change your employers' attitude? Would you simply quit? Or would you blow the whistle, knowing that your employer would not only fire you, but attempt to discredit you? Let's hope you never face this situation. But Dr. Jeffrey Wigand did. The LabMan talks to Dr. Wigand in advance of his plenary lecture at LabAutomation 2009.
Automated Labs to monitor worldwide infectious diseases
We all remember the bird flu scare from a few years ago. Experts warn that the threat of a true worldwide infectious disease pandemic is real. UCLA and Los Alamos National Lab have joined forces to begin developing the High Throughput Laboratory Network to provide a worldwide rapid response capability and surveillance system for infectious disease. The LabMan talked to Tony Beugelsdijk and Torsten Staab of LANL about the project and the technology they are using.
The Lab Man talks about Microplates!
You use and depend on them daily. You assume the first one will be just like the last one, but that hasn't always been the case. On this month's podcast, The Lab Man talks to Carol Homon about the evolution of microplate standards and laboratory automation standards in general. Be sure to listen, because a conversation with Carol is never dull!
July 2008
Quenching Your Thirst for Knowledge!
Today ALA launched its newest program bringing you — the laboratory automation community — the best and most in news and information about our evolving field in a live news feed. This real-time, 24-7-365 news service offers you access to information from billions and billions of sources daily — all at your fingertips delivered directly to your desktop. To learn more, visit The Lab Man blog/podcast for a conversation with ALA President Jim Sterling. Podcast; Blog.
June 2008
Inside Biopharma Lab Automation
Are you interested to know how the internal automation group of a large biopharma company works? How do they make decisions about technology and resources? How are they positioning themselves in the current business climate? The Lab Man talks with Peter Grandsard, an Executive Director of Research at Amgen, Inc. about his Research & Automation Technologies group.
May 2008
An Automated Crystal Ball?
X-ray crystallography has long been used as a tool for studying the structure of proteins, but the process of creating and evaluating protein crystals for this analysis has always been a tedious and very artful endeavor. The long story of automating this process is a fascinating case study of how to and not to approach automating a laboratory process. The LabMan discusses this with Eric Baldwin, Director of Protein Crystallography at Bristol-Myers Squibb.
April 2008
Designing Experiments the Automated Way
Experiments tend to work better if they're planned, and experiments are less laborious if automated. This month The Lab Man explores the combination of both - Automated Design of Experiments. It's all about software to design great experiments and then sitting back and watching your automation carry out the plan!
March 2008
A New Location for LabAutomation?
The Lab Man talks to Brenda Dreier, the ALA Director of Event Management and to Jim Sterling, the current ALA president, about the history and future of the LabAutomation conference.
February 2008
Innovation and Change at LabAutomation2008
The ALA does many things to encourage and recognize innovation! Check out the "live" podcasts from LabAutomation2008 with the New Product Award winners, the Student Poster Award winner and a specialist in Career Development. Read The Lab Man blog for more impressions of this years event!
- NPA Winner: Qiagen
- NPA Winner: Formulatrix
- NPA Winner: Viaflow
- Nicole Tolan — Student Poster Winner
- Megan Driscoll — Career Management
January 2008
Teaching Microplates New Tricks
What's new with microplates other than squeezing more wells into the same footprint? The Lab Man talks to Lane Niles, an independent consultant in the field of Assay Biophysics, about new developments in microplate material science.
December 2007
Microsoft a player in bioinformatics?
We're all aware of Microsoft products for our PC's, but did you know that the company is becoming much more active in the bioinformatics field? The LabMan has a conversation with Rudy Potenzone, Industry Technology Strategist for Microsoft, about the Microsoft BioIT Alliance initiative.
November 2007
Interview with Dean Kamen
The LabMan talks with Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway human transport device, about technology education and FIRST.
October 2007
Vision Systems Evaluate Behavior
The LabMan talks to Dr. Lucas Noldus, CEO of Noldus Information Technology in the Netherlands, about recent software advances that make it possible to conduct advanced evalutions of animal and human behavior.
September 2007
The return of RFID?
The Lab Man talks to Rick Pestian of the RFID Solutions Center about whether Radio Frequency ID will make a lab comeback via improved technology and dramatically lowered cost as it is doing in the shipping and retail industry.
August 2007
Is Your Industry Going Hollywood?
The Lab Man discusses a recent article published in The Scientist which proposes that the future business model for Pharma should be patterned after the movie industry. Together with Charles R. Powell, Chief Commercial Officer of Aurora Biotechnologies, The Lab Man ponders the effect such a business model might have on laboratory automation.
July 2007
Spotlight on Putting Lab Automation to Work
The recent ALA survey on Industrial Laboratory Automation indicated that the challenge has shifted from simply implementing fast, reliable automation tools to the complexities of doing new and better science with those tools. The Lab Man speaks with ALA President Reinhold Schaefer about the new ALA Spotlight Series of workshops, which are designed specifically to shine a "spotlight" on the evolving challenge of putting automation to work to do science.
June 2007
ELN's are here!
If your organization isn't developing its Electronic Laboratory Notebook (ELN) strategy, then you're at risk of falling behind the curve. ELN's are here and being implemented by mainstream organizations, not just early "bleeding edge" adopters. But it's not all simple and easy just yet, as we are told in this podcast conversation with Michael Elliott of Atrium Research.
May 2007
This month, The Lab Man talks with Kevin Hrusovsky, president and CEO of Caliper Life Sciences and former ALA board member, about the perceived trend that technology providing companies are migrating more into the business of service and partnership to the life sciences industry.
April 2007
This month, the Lab Man has a discussion about the impact on laboratory automation of new Operating Systems such as Windows Vista with software development engineer Bob Burger of Beckman Coulter.
March 2007
The Lab Man interviews the closing speaker of LabAutomation2007, Daniel H. Wilson, author of "How to Survive a Robot Uprising."
February 2007: What did we learn at LabAutomation 2007?
This month's posting consists of three podcasts, all recorded live on the LabAutomation2007 exhibit floor, and each featuring one of the ALA New Product Award (NPA) Designation winners.
January 2007
ALA Survey Results #3: Nuts and Bolts???
December 2006
ALA Survey Results #2: Why automate???
November 2006
ALA Survey Results #1: How do we get lab automation done?
October 2006
Microfluidics: Hits and Misses – What’s the state of evolution of this technology?
September 2006
What are the proper techniques to accurately pipetting DMSO based solutions?
August 2006
What standards exist covering the integration of laboratory automation?
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Ethics and technology
What if you determined that your employer was more interested in corporate profits vs. informing the public about the possible health risks of their product? Would you feel that the public ought to look out for themselves, and quietly keep doing your job? Would you try to change your employers' attitude? Would you simply quit? Or would you blow the whistle, knowing that your employer would not only fire you, but attempt to discredit you? Let's hope you never face this situation. But Dr. Jeffrey Wigand did. The LabMan talks to Dr. Wigand in advance of his plenary lecture at LabAutomation 2009.