Abstract
“…the amount of information presented at LabAutomation poster sessions is staggering.”
The poster sessions have become a popular component of the LabAutomation conference, a valuable means for transmitting new and exciting information, and a venue for the laboratory automation community to showcase its work. Over the years, the poster program has grown from a single 35-poster session at ICAR 1992 to a two-day affair, with more than 200 posters presented at LabAutomation2004.
In the early days of ICAR/LabAutomation, a “best poster” contest was instituted to promote interest in the poster program. With members of the ALA Scientific Committee serving as judges, the presenters of the top two or three posters were awarded prizes ranging from personal digital assistants and other computer gear to that all-time favorite—cash. As the number of posters began to climb, it became physically impossible for the judges to view, let alone appraise fairly, all the posters. Accordingly, the eligibility for the contest was restricted to only those posters from students, post-docs, and junior faculty receiving ALA travel grants. This has reduced the number of entries to a manageable thirty or fewer each year.
Ensuring that each poster presentation is equitably and thoroughly evaluated is the paramount concern in the poster contest. The wide scope of interests presented at LabAutomation is reflected in the poster topics and makes the poster judging difficult, as no single evaluator has the background to do justice to all the posters. To circumvent this problem, we created a two-tiered evaluation system. In the first round, teams of two to four judges, chosen for their broad experience and mixed by scientific interest, evaluate five to six posters and choose their top pick. In the second round, a similarly constituted four-person team examines the selections culled from the first round and selects the winners. In this way, the top posters are evaluated by at least six judges with expertise spanning the LabAutomation spectrum. Poster presentations are appraised in part on the oral delivery of the presenter, the utility of the poster to serve as presentation graphics during the oral presentation, the ability of the poster to convey information absent the presenter, the scientific quality of the information presented, and the overall relevance of the work. In recent years the first place winner has received a check from the ALA for $1,000 with the second place winner receiving half that. Occasionally, the judges have determined that one or two additional posters merit $250 honorable mention awards. In addition to the monetary prizes, the winning posters, proudly sporting oversized award ribbons, are placed in a prominent location for viewing throughout the remainder of the meeting.
Because the amount of information presented at LabAutomation poster sessions is staggering, it is unlikely that attendees can adequately absorb it all in the 90 minutes allotted for each session. Of course, folks who could not attend the conference have only the on-line abstracts to go on. As a part of the ALA's continuing interest in promoting education and promulgating new knowledge, we have dedicated this issue of JALA to capturing some of the highlights from the 2004 poster sessions and making them available to our readers. Each poster presenter was invited to submit his/her poster for consideration in this issue, and a special team of reviewers from the ALA ranks rated the submissions. Short technical briefs based on the LabAutomation2004 poster presentations of the best-rated submissions are presented herein. We realize that the format and makeup of a high quality poster is not the same as that of a good technical brief, so the presentations in this issue have been modified somewhat to function better in print.
We are happy to spotlight the work of Darren Hillegonds from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on “High Throughput Measurement of 41Ca by Accelerator Mass Spectrometry to Quantitate Small Changes in Individual Human Bone Turnover Rates” that won first place in this year's poster contest, and to feature the poster of Gwendolyn Motz Stovall from the University of Texas, who won third prize for her poster “Automated Optimization of Aptamer Selection Buffer Conditions.” An article based on the poster from this year's second place winner, Shalini Prasad from the University of California — Riverside, is not presented here since, as the first-place winner in last year's contest, she and her work were profiled in JALA 2003, 8.2, 50–51 and 81–85.
I would like to thank the editorial review team that evaluated the submissions for this issue, all the poster judges who have served over the years at both LabAutomation and smallTalk conferences, and Nan Hallock and Mark Russo who did the hard work of putting this issue together. Finally, I send a special note of appreciation to all the poster presenters and co-authors who contribute so much to the success of LabAutomation and its poster sessions. Without their efforts this issue would literally not have been possible. I hope you enjoy it.
Sincerely,
Gary W. Kramer, Ph.D.