I am an Automation Engineer currently at Bristol Myers Squibb in early discovery. This is my sixth year working on automation and my eleventh in biotech. My experience has featured Hamilton liquid handlers and Python, though I am happy to use any tool available to me that is best for the job. I am currently getting up to speed with Cellario.
I love that our work is interdisciplinary and highly collaborative. The most powerful solutions often push our skills and require all perspectives to be considered.
I view lab automation as having four pillars, all of which I am interested in: assay automation, data acquisition, data processing, and LIMS integration. The field is growing and changing rapidly and I appreciate having this site as a way to keep up.
Topics I would be happy to have a conversation about are:
I’m Agostino from Italy and I currently work to develop a semi-autonomous NGS library prep workcell
We currently use some Opentrons OT2 with modules and a robotic arm (Eva from Automata) to extend walkaway time (maybe )
I like automation, writing software and building everething needed to do something (thanks 3D printer)
Thanks for this great space to share ideas!
agostino
Hi I am Shastine, I studied Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley, and then went into industrial automation for 5 years. Then I meandered my way into Genentech doing pilot plant automation, but I missed making things move, so I searched the Genentech internal job postings for the word “robot” and found my way into laboratory automation in 2008. My first lab robot was a Hamilton STAR and the person who trained me was none other than Eric Sindelar back when he was an apps engineer. I have worked on most of the popular liquid handlers (except Tecans) but specialize in Hamiltons and to a lesser extent Bravos. After Genentech, I went to a now defunct diagnostics company and then was employee number 39 at Twist Biosciences, where I was responsible for all of the initial Hamilton programming. After one more stint at another drug discovery company, I went to full-time consulting, in 2019. I am glad to have found this forum, I look forward to geeking out with y’all.
Hi guys, my name is Calum and i’m a Business Development Manager at Automata. I work with customers to help design and deploy completely automated applications on Automata’s LINQ platform. Automata’s platform is the worlds first fully automated lab bench, delivering true walk away time from the bench for scientists working in the lab. Keen to connect and discuss automation and Automata’s platform with those interested to know how it can transform their lab. Feel free to connect with me on LI.
My name is Hans-Otto and I am from Germany, but working and living in Oslo, Norway.
So far I have been working in medical biochemistry, psychopharmacology and metabolomics environments as a method specialist in UPLC-HRMS analysis. In my current workplace we are lucky to have two Hamilton Star robots, and after teaching myself python I was thrilled to be able to attend the basic VENUS programming course.
I love lab-automation and I definitely want to learn more. When I came over this group I just had to sign up!
Feel free to reach out on linked-in, I am very willing to have a chat about anything concerning lab-automation!
Hi Stefan,
What I meant was that after I learned a bit python and made a program which automates a manual step of our workflow (Hamilton Star output to Vanquish-Orbitrap input), basically data handling.
I became very interested in learning more programming on our robots, attended a basic VENUS course and now am making customised methods which satisfy the needs of our lab and make the workflow more and more automatic.
After gathering some experience I want to take the advanced programming VENUS course, make more advanced methods and see where life takes me.
How about you?
Oh cool! Just curious, we are tangentially a python themed forum and I am a huge fan of the language as well.
The way I use it is primarily by developing the PyHamilton and PyLabRobot libraries which can make it easier to program advanced methods with data integration like you describe.
My name is Spencer Gellner I am an Automation Engineer in the Seattle, WA (USA) area LinkedIn. Working primarily on the Hamilton Suite of liquid handlers. Developing methods for our Manufacturing team to pool large amounts of oligos.
Previously was a Research Associate when I got “voluntold” to learn how to develop methods for our Tecan Fluent for to fully automate our ELISA Assays.
Now I’m currently trying to teach myself as much python and SQL as possible. Though thankfully we will be trying out Dynamic Devices Lynx LM900 with the Variable volume 96 head so I can go back to my C# roots. Hopefully, I can share our teams triumphs and subsequent failures as we get this system in place as I myself have benefited greatly from the Hamilton Venus category help.
C# is the way they integrate custom dialog boxes and handle parsing of the input file. We are going to be transitioning our current 384 WP pooling method from Hamilton STAR to this system so we will be using a couple different C# libraries to handle database access and SQL commands. While we do like our Hamilton method for cherry picking for large 80K oligo orders 96>16.
I’ll be sure to document the progress in Dynamic Devices (Lynx) as we will be getting ours installed on the 24th so hopefully I can share some fun stuff.
I am Huajiang Wei from China, I am very glad to join this forum and know so many people, who do the same thing as me, like pyhamilton and qslib. I worked for Hamilton China and then for Roche, training and supporting for products of molecular diagnostic, like CAP/CTM, 201, 4800/6800, synergy.
Now I work for a small company, developing software system for local IVD vendor with automation system, like blood group testing (based on STARlet/STAR/Compact Instrument) and blood screening. And now we are working on software of lab automation with scheduler and 3D simulation.
Hi yunghans! Mind if I ask what your preferred self-instruction tool for Python was?
I’m currently enrolled in some online courses and have been reading through textbooks but was curious what your favorite learning approach might have been.
Sure!
Well first of all I must say that I had no concrete programming experience whatsoever before I started.
But I’m a lazy guy who enjoys fixing a time consuming, repetitive task, so I like to understand a process and how to optimise it rather than the task itself (e.g. pipetting: super interested in the physical chemistry behind the process but not so much in pipetting itself).
So at my job I work both in R&D and about 30% in routine analysis. One of the tasks in the routine part is to convert one .csv file from the Hamilton robot into 2 to 6 files for our UHPLC-HRMS analysis. Basically just data handling, but there are many steps in this due to multiple samples, mobile phase, quality controls, standards, …
So I had a concrete problem which I wanted to solve by making a simple program.
I just started googling and watching some YouTube videos, talking to people I knew had experience if I was struggling with a specific thing.
I finally made the code work, but it was pretty messy. This picture sums it up pretty well:
I became more interested in programming and then I started searching for literature. I was looking for a book which was not too complex, not too simple, not too many pages, but not a pocket book. Should be something for people who have a good understanding of math/natural sciences, but are quite new to the programming field and it should be about python.
I am really satisfied with “Python 3 für Studium und Ausbildung: Einfach lernen und professionell anwenden”, I’m german and like the precision of the German language, so I chose this one (don’t know if there is an English version, but I’m sure that there are other good books out there.
People learn in different ways, but I then chose to enrol as a so called “single subject student” at the university in a course called “Introduction to Python for scientific programming” where I also get my competence documented with credit points. I plan on taking one course per semester, since I’m full time employed, and I like the “pressure” from the university in form of weekly assignments, good teachers and exams.
My name is Justin Lu and I’m currently working as an Associate Scientist with Vaxcyte! I’ve mostly worked in the development of sequencing platforms and have pivoted into protein engineering recently. I’ve made methods on several liquid handlers, but am hoping to gain more knowledge on automation to empower my team.
I’m Austin: a PhD student in machine learning at Cambridge. My research is on optimization algorithms which could be useful for automated labs (like Bayesian optimization). However, I don’t’ actually work on automated labs directly (yet).
Do you have any particular domains you’d like to apply this to?
Good question: in my PhD I have mainly focused on virtual screening of molecules as the target applications, but I imagine that the same techniques could work with minimal modification on protein design or reaction condition optimization. Essentially anything using an automated lab really . that’s why I decided to join this forum!
Hi! I was wondering whether there is a thread on this forum about Analytik Jena/CyBio Felix and whether it would be useful to make one ( would anyone be interested) ?
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