Episodes
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Emilie Fritsch, Principal Scientist at Syngenta, joins Fane to talk about her journey from scientist to lab automation specialist. As her career evolved, so did her understanding of the automation needs of science. She went from molecular biology to the perfect blend of science and automation learning the best of both worlds to shape better science.
The podcast is filled with nuggets of wisdom to take away, here’s what you can expect:
(3:00 mins) Being thrown into the deep end of lab automation (7:30 mins) Three users of new technology: early adopters, watchers and skeptics (11:40 mins) Communicate reassurance. Look after those that are resisting new technologies and they will become your champions (14:11 mins) The “Eureka” moment of a skeptic adopting new technology feels really good (15:43 mins) The key learning from automation: not one size fits all (21:43 mins) Understand your problem so you know when to use automation (23:05 mins) Biologists need to spend less time pipetting and more time on the things they’re good at: the science (27:50 mins) Scientists need to be good communicators to thrive in a diverse environment filled with opportunities and challenges (31:43 mins) Women can become lab automation specialists, your study doesn’t define your scientific futureListen to the podcast to follow the conversation. If you have questions about this podcast - [email protected] is only an email away
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Mario Antonio Torres Acosta,Postdoctoral Research Fellow at UCL, joins us to talk about his lab automation journey as an academic, specifically teaching others how to use lab automation.
There’s plenty to cover in this episode, but you can look forward to hearing about:
The shift to lab automation post-pandemic (5:25 mins) Automation and expertize is fluid, so should be the approach to adopting it and to think in the long term (11:30 mins to 16:21mins) Commitment is a big barrier to adopting lab automation (21:19 mins) Assessing how comfortable a person is with automation is to say nothing, see what they do and use this as a measure for your adoption (25:59 mins) Addressing the automation skills shortage in life sciences starts in academia (32:50 mins)Mario and Fane delve into the deep nitty-gritty of automation in an academic setting with lessons that apply to those on their automation journey.
Listen to the podcast to follow the conversation. If you have questions about this podcast - [email protected] is only an email away!
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Episodes manquant?
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Bob Gantzer, Director of Lab Automation at Beam Therapeutics joins us to talk about his trials and tribulations across his lab automation journey.
Here are some of the many golden threads of wisdom he speaks to:
How he became a lab automation guru by being a “flunky scientist” Taking the hard lessons of automating in a large company and raising it to a fledgling biotech company Why you must prioritize automation in your R&D Lab automation is not a technical problem, it’s a people problem, and you have to sell the dream to scientists who aren’t trained with highly integrated robotics.There’s a ton of helpful things Bob said about lab automation and how he learned to be successful at implementing it.
Listen to the podcast to follow the conversation. If you have any questions about this podcast - [email protected] is only an email away!
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Gintarė Bučaitė is a Senior Scientist at Benevolent AI, and she’s carved out her career working in academia, big pharma and small biotech doing what she does best - enabling scientists to do the science they want to do.
But it’s not always been easy. In this podcast, she talks about her journey of actively shaping her career and the science she wants to achieve. From the uncertainty of her post-doc career to her forays in data science to enable scientists to do the science they want, Gintarė shares her journey with the hope that others learn from her successes and challenges.
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Phil Kay is a Learning Manager at JMP with over 16 years of practical experience working with a multitude of companies across industries championing Design of Experiments (DOE) and the marvels of this transformational methodology.
In this podcast, he talks about how DOE in life sciences has been a fascinating evolution to watch. How it’s transformed the way biopharma companies get drugs to market faster, how it’s helped improve the productivity and predictability of R&D teams, and how it has impacted a person’s career. Design of Experiments is the future, the future is already here with scientists and automation at the heart of this.
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Markus Gershater is the Chief Science Officer of Synthace and has over 15 years of experience working with biopharma and life sciences companies to enable better experimentation for scientists. He’s also a champion for Design of Experiments (DOE) as the way forward for experimentation.
In this podcast, Markus goes into the framing of “Lab of the Future”. He shares his own personal experiences to dig into this adage and why he feels the framing “isn’t quite right”. He says “the lab is more than just the room itself, it’s the technologies, people, and science involved”. He also goes into deep detail about the importance of metadata and why scientists need to take care better of their data.
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Christa Short, VP for Process Sciences at Wheeler Bio, is a master in navigating bioprocessing. She’s spent over 20 years working with biopharma companies to develop their drugs as quickly and as scalably as possible.
In this podcast, Christa shares her experiences and deep insights on her life as a bioprocess expert. She’s spent her career navigating the tricky challenges you need to overcome in order to thrive in a fast-paced CDMO environment. She discusses what the grand vision is for biopharmas working with CDMOs and some of the ways that they're addressing pain points, like finding expertise in niche cell lines and structuring data from experimental runs.
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John Conway is a cloud lab evangelist and founder of 20/15 Visioneers and has over 30 years of experience working with biopharma companies tackle their R&D challenges in a multitude of capacities to drive forward changes through technology, strategy and change management.
In this podcast, Jon talks about the R&D journey he has taken in the last 30 years, change management over the decades, the changes that we as an industry need to make and ultimately - the bright future that awaits us.
He shares his insight on biopharma’s approach to data environments, utilizing computer-aided biology technologies and what biopharma culture needs to change in order to realize the ideal standard of data environments - “that anybody in the field should be able to take it and completely understand the data set and do what they want to do with it.”
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Traci Howard is a Management Consultant with Attainment Consulting Services and has over seven years of experience working with the unique challenges facing biotech companies - among them, managing change.
Following on from Part 1, which looked at the broader industry, Fane Mensah and Traci Howard take a closer look at life science organizations. Traci shares her tips and tools to introduce new technologies into an organization, and how to encourage the successful adoption of computer-aided biology technologies whether that's top-down from the management team, or from the research team upwards.
Traci takes us through the Change Journey - how to make a case for change within an organization and what the important questions that need answering are to help people sit up and take notice. -
Traci Howard is a Management Consultant with Attainment Consulting Services and has over seven years of experience working with the unique challenges facing biotech companies - among them, managing change.
In Part 1 of this special two-part episode of CABTalks by Synthace, Fane Mensah and Traci Howard discuss the broad industry challenge of implementing the appropriate technologies in the appropriate organizations at the appropriate time, as well as how vendors and tech developers should engage in conversations with their prospective clients.
We talk about how vendors and technology developers can segment their audience and tailor their approach to help individual clients meet their research goals. The conversation continues in Part 2, taking a closer look at changes like introducing new technologies can be managed within a life science organization. -
Alexandre Super is a Data Scientist in upstream process sciences at UCB, a global biopharma company focusing on neurology and immunology.
In this episode of CABTalks by Synthace, Alexandre and Fane discuss bioprocessing and data management. What are the challenges in moving from R&D to a scaled-up process? And how are Computer-Aided Biology tools helping tackle bioprocesses’ biggest challenge of all: capturing high-quality data.
Listen in to learn how Automation, Miniaturization, and Digitalization play key roles in 21st Century bioprocessing.
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Jesse Johnson is head of Data Science and Data Engineering at Dewpoint Therapeutics, an R&D-stage biotech startup, and the author of the Scaling Biotech blog where he pursues his goal to find ways to scale biotech research platforms through better software and organizational design.
In this episode of CAB Talk, we discuss Jesse's framework for scaling biotech, explore the three big trade-offs of Cost vs Reliability, Immediacy vs Generality, and Flexibility vs Consistency, and touch on how we can better communicate the need for computer-aided biology.
FYI - the book Jesse mentions is Data-Centric Biology: A Philosophical Study by Sabina Leonelli
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With advancements in artificial intelligence and cloud computing technologies, there are a growing number of solutions in Computer-Aided Biology. But what exactly are the problems? We speak with Dr Mike Fero, the former CEO and current COO of TeselaGen - one of the first big AI companies in the Computer-Aided Biology, on the problems facing scientists and how CAB companies should be articulating that problem. We also chat about Mike's journey from Physics into Computer-Aided Biology, the challenges facing CAB companies and CEOs today, as well as his personal challenge of balancing work with life and providing "wraparound care" for his grandchild.
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Biology is a notoriously difficult research area, especially for replicating results. To paraphrase from a film that has inspired thousands of people to get into this field: life finds a way (of behaving unexpectedly). Because everything is so interconnected in biology, the one-factor-at-a-time (OFAT) approach is usually taken to investigate biological systems. But what if there were a better way to gain insights into the holistic nature of biology and explore the interconnectedness of various factors while maintaining scientific accuracy? Well there is, it’s called Design of Experiments (DOE).
When we say DOE we are talking about a branch of applied statistics that can be applied to experimental design to explore the relationships between factors in an experiment as well as the effect of the factors themselves. Compared to other experimental approaches, such as the OFAT approach, DOE can save time and resources in performing experiments while providing deeper insights.
In CABTalk this month, EngD student Shama Chilakwad explains how her studies are entirely based on exploring the possibilities of DOE in studying transaminases.
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Research in life science is changing fast. The skillsets of scientists can barely keep up with the changing technology, demanding new and better knowledge of statistics, programming, experimental design as well as a plethora of new automation tools. So what will the lab and, more importantly, the researcher of the future look like? We asked Dr Melissa Sterry, who is a Design Scientist, Systems Theorist and Futurist, to help us imagine the future of research.
#ComputerAidedBiology #Automation #Software #SyntheticBiology #SciencePodcast
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Cloud computing is helping revolutionize the personalized healthcare space with 21st century Computer-Aided Biology tools. Next generation sequencing technologies capable of generating more data than ever before, the storage, processing and analysis of that data is more than a single machine can handle. Enter the cloud. In this episode we talk with Jo Bhakdi, CEO of Quantgene, a company bringing the power of next generation deep sequencing to liquid biopsies to search for early signs of cancer. He tells us how the cloud plays a critical role in managing all that data and how their technology aims to increase the human life span by a decade within a decade.
Quantgene are working with Serenity, a system which utilizes Quantgene's liquid biopsy and AI, and has turned it into a customer-facing product. For US customers who are interested in liquid biopsy for early cancer signal detection and whole exome sequencing, and who want to incorporate the Serenity system into a preventative health plan, visit www.chooseserenity.com and use the discount code CAB15 for 15% off at checkout.
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Vaccines, vaccines, vaccines! That is all we hear about these days. But how do they work in the body? And how is the world of vaccine development changing with new Computer-Aided Biology tools? We talk to Assistant Professor Bruno Correia at EPFL in Switzerland about the challenges facing vaccines and his research on protein engineering and design.
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Intellectual Property has a funny relationship with research and innovation. Sara Holland is a patent attorney at Potter Clarkson and expert in Synthetic Biology IP. She talks us through the steps in identifying if your research could be protected, what goes into making a patent, and dispels the rumors around publishing vs patenting - you can have it all!
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Getting started in a career is hard and for the field of Computer-Aided Biology, it can be extra difficult. A multitude of skills are often sought after by employers, and everybody wants someone with experience. Where do you start in CAB? How does the hiring process work and what are employers really looking for? And what can I expect to earn? In this episode we speak to Tom Agg of Vivid Technology who explains it all!
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We never thought it would happen but we have finally reached the end of 2020! What better way to honor the year of hindsight than by looking back and catching up with our guests from earlier in the series (and the pandemic) to see how 2020 played out for them and what their thoughts are on the future.
Starring: Keltoum Boukra of LabGenius, Joby Jenkins of SPT Labtech, Marilene Pavan of LanzaTech, James Reading of University College London, Tess Korthout of The Hyve, and Davide Danovi of Kings College London.
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