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Webinar: Laboratory Management Matters

Laboratory management matters even if lab managers are largely unsung heroes in science history. The third word in the title of this blog is a verb representing this opinion. It can also be a noun reflecting the many matters or aspects of lab managem

Laboratory management matters even if lab managers are largely unsung heroes in science history. The third word in the title of this blog is a verb representing this opinion. It can also be a noun reflecting the many matters or aspects of lab management to be discussed in this weekly blog.

What are my qualifications to discuss laboratory management particularly in a blog format, which customarily strongly reflects personal opinions of the writer? A Ph.D. chemist, I have been a team leader and research manager for a very large chemical company, Shell Chemical, and a very small one, Tomah Products with a dozen people researchers. I have worked on product and process development plus technical service and supervised others working in these areas. Besides my 35 years industrial research experience I have taught high school chemistry and been a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Notre Dame. These days I am a consultant and writer.

The author of a well-received book,"Career Management for Scientists and Engineers", I have worked as a volunteer career consultant for the American Chemical Society helping members deal with job hunting and on-the-job issues. I believe that lab management is an under-emphasized component of scientific discovery, innovation and corporate success. That's the motivation behind my current book project, "Accelerating Innovation through Effective Laboratory Management," scheduled for mid-2010 release. Effective laboratory management is essential to discovery and innovation Essential Nature of Lab Management.

In an industrial environment it is essential to profit growth and corporate success. It can also maximize the professional achievements and success of bench scientists, engineers and technicians. DuPont Company provides a great example. From the 1930s to the 1950s, a stream of innovative polymers poured out of the DuPont Experimental Station. The names of their discoverers such as Wallace Carothers are well known in the annals of science. The lab managers who established an environment of innovation in the middle of the Great Depression are unknown today at least outside the confines of DuPont. Yet they were essential to making nylon and other fabrics household names. These polymers are still produced in the billions of pounds and have earned companies billions of dollars in profits. Other industrial laboratories long renowned for innovation thanks to effective laboratory management include Bell Labs, Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and General Electric. The progenitors of the modern industrial laboratory, Thomas Edison's labs in Menlo Park and West Orange, were run by a great lab manager, Thomas Edison himself. By the Great Depression, outstanding academic laboratories were well established at major universities around the world. World War II resulted in an explosion of government research that evolved into today's U.S. national laboratories among other government labs. General Leslie Groves, an engineer by training, managed the Manhattan Project and was called "the Manhattan Project's indispensable man" by one of his biographers, Robert S. Norris.

In future blogs we will leave history mostly behind us and discuss current issues and topics in lab management. I hope readers will participate in these discussions.



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John K. Borchardt

Dr. Borchardt is a consultant and technical writer. The author of the book “Career Management for Scientists and Engineers,” he writes often on career-related subjects.