David F. Beyerlein, vice president of global operations at MicroConstants, Inc., talks to contributing editor Tanuja Koppal, Ph.D., about the options he had available and the decisions he made regarding consolidating the servicing and maintenance

Michael Noble, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of British Columbia and chair of the Program Office for Laboratory Quality Management, emphasizes that while increased awareness, education and standardization of information and protocols have helped improve laboratory quality, people still need to be reminded that the pursuit of quality is a commitment that needs constant time, effort and money. 

Sukhanya Jayachandra, Ph.D., Senior Research Investigator and head of the Cellular Resource Group, Lead Discovery Profiling Compound Management at Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS), discusses her cell culture core facility.

James Gibson, Ph.D., Director of the Office of Environment, Health and Safety (EH&S), and Nancy Wayne, Ph.D., Professor of Physiology and Associate Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), discuss the recently formed UC Center for Laboratory Safety, its mission and its goals.

Matthew Gudorf, campus energy manager with the Facilities Management group at University of California, Irvine, (UCI) discusses the Smart Labs program developed at UCI, which aims to reduce overall energy consumption by 50 percent.

Byron Brehm-Stecher, Ph.D., Associate Professor in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition at Iowa State University, heads the Rapid Microbial Detection & Control Laboratory that works to ensure the safety of the food supply through improved detection and inactivation of food-borne pathogens. While the laboratory uses a combination of several different analytical tools for rapid detection, a key emphasis lies on pre-analytical sample preparation (sample prep), which is the separation and concentration of target cells from complex samples and removal of interfering matrix components prior to detection. He talks about the common challenges associated with sample prep and what an ideal sample prep process should involve.

Ralph Garippa, Ph.D., independent consultant and former head of cell-based high-throughput screening (HTS) and microscopic imaging-based high-content screening (HCS) at Hoffmann-La Roche, discusses the recent trends in cell culture.

David Dooling, Ph.D., assistant director of informatics at the Genome Institute at Washington University, discusses the challenges associated with tackling vast amounts of data in large sequencing labs and shares his experiences in building and utilizing an advanced LIMS for data tracking and storage.

Stephen Barnes, Ph.D., Professor of Pharmacology & Toxicology and Director of the Targeted Metabolomics and Proteomics Laboratory at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), talks about the changes taking place in the field of mass spectrometry (MS) as it migrates from the research lab to a clinical environment.

Daniel Zimmerli, associate scientist and lead of the Separation Science Point group, discusses how his team uses high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and ultra-high performance (or pressure) LC (UHPLC) technologies for analytical and preparative work.

Emily Anna Bridges, laboratory manager in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of Pennsylvania, School of Medicine, shares her harrowing experiences when the aged water purification system supplying water to her research building stopped functioning entirely, after months of causing leaks and contamination problems.

Greg Herman, program manager at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) discusses his experiences planning, designing and constructing the Biological Sciences Facility and the Computational Sciences Facility at PNNL.