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 Lab Manager Magazine helps provide a forum and a framework to help lab professionals hire and supervise staff, establish a laboratory, and plan a coherent research program, while keeping the goals of good science and scientific discovery at the forefront.
Most lab managers, by education and experience, are thoroughly capable of handling the technical aspects of their jobs, but their managerial skills are often obtained haphazardly.
Lab Manager Magazine is written with those managers in mind and has the distinct editorial mission of providing practical information on business, strategy, leadership and staffing as well as the industry and technology news needed to effectively manage today's lab.
Managerial skills for most lab managers are often obtained haphazardly.
Lab Manager Magazine is written with those managers in mind and has the distinct editorial mission of providing practical information on business, leadership and staffing as well as the industry and technology news needed to effectively manage today's lab.
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Publisher: LabX
Download Lab Manager Magazine, October 2009
PDF format, 12.9MB, 81Pages.
Show me the Money
So far, nearly 5,000 grants totalling over $1 billion have been awarded by NIH. Most have been awarded to research labs at large universities and small colleges, while some have been awarded to small, privately owned research and product development companies. This month’s feature article looks at how grant funding as well as venture capital investment is impacting research efforts.
Richard Daub
Perspective On: An Environmental Lab
Lab manager Larry Decker’s TestAmerica environmental lab in Connecticut is where he and his staff analyze thousands of soil, wastewater, and monitoring well samples each month. One key to the lab’s success is a management team that “works on training every individual to be reactive and ready to go if the person is needed in a different department.”
Sara Goudarzi
18 Honing Your Interviewing Skills
For most laboratories, turnover is low and tenures are high, so the opportunity and necessity to conduct interviews is limited. But, when it’s necessary, the author argues that “behavioral event interviews” work best because the questioning format requires on-the-spot self-analysis that is difficult to prepare for except through life experiences. Ronald B. Pickett
22 Training on a Budget
In tough economic times many companies slash their training budgets, thinking that training is expendable. This, according to the author, is ill-advised. Training is not an expense to be minimized; it is an investment that pays dividends by helping workers do their jobs more effectively so that they can positively impact a company’s bottom line.
Brian C. Smith, Ph.D.
TECHNOLOGY & OPERATIONS
26 Biological Sample Storage and Management
This author highlights some of the shortcomings in the use of cold-temperature-based sample storage, describes new technologies available that mitigate these shortcomings, and offers suggestions on the convergence of these technologies in meeting the global challenge to be faced as bio-specimen collection increases in research labs as well as in bio-banks.
Omoshile Clement
30 BSC Ergonomics and ADA Compliance
Because of the increased incidence of work-related musculoskeletal disorders among laboratory workers, the principles of ergonomic design and compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) are becoming increasingly important topics in the design of the biological safety cabinet (BSC). David S. Phillips
BUSINESS MANAGEMENT
46 Outsourcing
Outsourcing laboratory work is usually done on the assumption that another laboratory is able to perform the work more cheaply and/or more rapidly while maintaining adequate quality of the results. Laboratory managers must study other laboratories to determine if this assumption is correct before outsourcing work to them. John K. Borchardt
50 When Growth Stalls
Sales and revenue growth are stalled at many companies in a variety of industries. As a result, these firms have frozen or reduced laboratory budgets and in some cases have reduced laboratory staffing levels. There are several ways laboratory managers can effectively respond to these situations in order to maintain laboratory productivity. John K. Borchardt
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EDITOR'S NOTE
Money, money, money
This month’s cover story, with its nod to the 1996 movie “Jerry Maguire,” calls attention to the challenges, uncertainty and frustration involved in securing research funds these days. Author Richard Daub examines how NIH, for one, has responded to the overwhelming amount of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) grant applications and how delays in fund allocation is damaging some labs—particularly in terms of hiring and firing. Daub also looks at the current state of venture capital funding for start-ups and what kind of research, if any, is receiving those dollars.
Talking about money or the lack thereof, but from a management point of view, John Borchardt in this month’s Business Management feature (page 50) offers up a variety of recession recovery scenarios and suggests ways for managers to maintain laboratory productivity when sales and revenue growth stall. Of particular interest is the idea of “failing cheap” by lowering the cost of experiments through investment in simulation software or increasing the pace of decision making. ...
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