Abstract
…a cornucopia of ideas and technology…
The scientific presentations at LabAutomation2005 in San Jose consisted of 120 podium and plenary talks, as well as close to 250 posters. Surveys show that the highest rated presentation was an interview with 1993 Nobel Prize winner Dr. Kary Banks Mullis. The interview style, based loosely on Inside the Actors Studio, was a novel approach for ALA and was executed admirably by Dr. Stephen C. Jacobson. This was but one example of a cornucopia of ideas and technology found at the conference. This issue of JALA attempts to recapture some of the material presented, document the work for those unable to attend the conference, and provide the material in a form that takes less time to absorb. As such, this special issue becomes the “last view” of LabAutomation2005. Already, a new scientific committee has formed and is energetically organizing the conference for 2006.
An inaugural event in 2005 was the ALA Innovation Award. This award was for the best nonplenary podium presentation. A group of judges organized by Dr. Gary Kramer reviewed all the submitted podium presentation abstracts and selected a semifinalist group of 10 extremely high quality talks (the complete list may be found on the ALA Web site at http://www.labautomation.org/news.php). The first winner of what we hope will become a much sought-after award was Dr. Dana Spence of Wayne State University for his podium presentation entitled “Can Systems Integration in Microfluidics Help Monitor Abnormal Metabolism in Red Blood Cells and its Physiological Consequences?” Dr. Spence prepared a paper based on his talk for peer review, and we are proud to include it as an original report in this issue.
For two days during the LabAutomation2005 conference, the poster exhibits offered a forum for the automation community, in a relatively informal mode, to share new work, novel ideas, and recent results. The poster exhibit has increased every year since its 1992 inception, to a new record of 245 posters in 2005. This represents a 33 percent increase over the 2004 exhibit. Poster presenters from around the world came from academic, government, and corporate laboratories, and included material covering the broad expanse of technologies that are of interest to LabAutomation attendees. The poster exhibit has become a major source of the scientific content of the conference, with a rating of excellent by about 13 percent of the 211 people who responded to our conference evaluation survey. We achieved about the same level of quality as we did in 2004 in spite of the large increase in numbers.
A Best Poster Contest has always been part of the poster program. As the number of posters increased over the years, it became increasingly difficult to fairly judge all of the posters. Historically, ALA solved this by limiting contest eligibility to the subset of the presenters deemed most in need of assistance. This group consists of students, post-docs, and junior faculty poster presenters. The majority of these authors receive ALA travel grants based on their submitted abstracts and requests for support. Not only do these young scientists get an opportunity to display their work and attend an international conference, but we as attendees get a look at promising new research and researchers from around the world.
This year, we had a record 42 people eligible for contest consideration. The boost was due in large part to the increased funding available to the ALA Education Committee, which was able to offer grants of housing, travel, and registration to 30 participants representing major universities from around the world. This increase was also accompanied by a huge increase in poster quality, according to our group of judges. Major kudos are deserved for the outstanding job done by the members of the Education Committee.
The judging is done by a group of experienced lab automation experts selected for their knowledge and wide range of experiences. We had 17 judges participate this year. The process for judging was done in two stages to ensure that each poster was thoroughly and equitably considered. An initial seven groups of two judges interviewed their assigned poster presenters and nominated their choices for semifinalists. After interviewing each of the semifinalists, a very long and energetic discussion ensued, and our final team of three judges selected the 2005 poster contest winners:
First Place ($1000) to Jennifer Lee of The University of Texas at Austin for “Exploring Sequence Space Through Automated In Vitro Selection” Second Place ($500) to Barbara J. Jones of Arizona State University for “Radical Activated Cleavage of Peptides and Proteins: An Alternative to Proteolytic Digestion” Third Place ($250) to Michael Torok of the University of Virginia for “The Cell and Organ Generator”
Our congratulations to these winners, whose pictures may be found on the ALA Web site at http://www.labautomation.org/news.php.
A major goal of this issue of JALA was to capture the poster content as short technical papers so that all ALA members can peruse them at a more leisurely pace outside of the hectic environment of the conference. All of the poster presenters were encouraged to submit their work in brief format. We received 89 responses and selected a number of these for peer review and revision. This resulted in an eclectic collection of short papers covering a wide range of material, including robotic sample preparation, quantitative RT-PCR, impedence probing, cell colony formation, experimental design, automated synthesis, microfluidic patch clamp technology, forensic DNA processing, cellular dialectric spectroscopy, and more.
We are happy to spotlight the work of this year's winning poster by Jennifer Lee on automated aptamer selections. The other winners have opted to publish their work at a later date. We look forward to seeing their work as original reports in future editions.
I would like to thank my poster cochair (Dr. Erik Rubin) and all of the judges who donated their precious conference time in a very time-critical evaluation of a large number of posters. The members of the second group deserving most of the credit for this edition are the many conscientious reviewers. Finally, special recognition goes out to all the authors and coauthors for their contributions. Their willingness to support the ALA by selecting JALA to share their work is what literally makes this and every issue possible.
I hope you find this special LabAutomation2005 issue valuable and enjoyable.
Sincerely,
