SETTING UP YOUR LAB
Setting up a new lab can be a time-consuming and often technically involved task. While most labs start with the budget and space being known ahead of time, it can be a daunting task to allocate the available resources effectively. Whether it is setting up a lab in an academic setting, or for a new start-up, similar questions emerge. How should you prioritize equipment purchases? How do you select your first hire and decide when to expand your lab group? Is the provided lab space suitable for experiments immediately, or are structural changes necessary? What institutional facilities can you access? The panel will address these concerns, and many more.
Todd anthony
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PSYCHIATRY AND NEUROLOGY AT boston children's hospital
Todd received his Ph.D. from Rockefeller University, where he studied cellular and molecular mechanisms of neural development, with a primary focus on a specific type of progenitor cell, the radial glial cell. He did this postdoctoral fellowship at the California Institute of Technology in the Anderson lab, where he pursued two major interests: 1) optogenetic dissection of lateral septal neural circuitry that controls stress-induced, persistent anxious states, and 2) development of a novel system for activity-dependent circuit manipulation.
Megan Hoban
Scientist at Magenta Therapeutics
Megan Hoban is currently a Scientist at Magenta Therapeutics, an early stage start-up that launched in November 2016. Megan joined Magenta last August as part of the pre-launch team and worked to establish their lab space by setting up vendor accounts, making equipment purchases, and applying for biosafety permits. She also co-managed the lab move to a brand new space in winter of 2017, working alongside Magenta's COO. Megan's background is in gene therapy for hematologic diseases. She did her graduate work at UCLA and a post-doc at Boston Children's Hospital before joining Magenta.
Nicolai Konow
Assistant Professor, Dept. Biological Sciences AT UMass. Lowell
Nicolai did his PhD at James Cook University in Australia on functional morphology and ecomechanics of coral reef fish feeding before adjusting his focus to include muscle physiology and movement biomechanics during post-doc at Johns Hopkins, Brown and Harvard Universities. He began setting up his laboratory at UML in 2016, to support programs on how age, injury, and disease-induced myopathies influence craniofacial function, and how muscle mechanics influence key evolutionary transformations. He will teach courses with comparative as well as clinical relevance at the interfaces between anatomy, physiology, and biomechanics.
Damien Wilpitz
LABORATORY RESEARCH MANAGER AND CONSULTANT at Experimental Designs Consulting, Inc.
Damien Wilpitz received his undergraduate degree in Biochemistry from the University of California, San Diego where he did undergraduate and post-graduate research in metabolic gene regulation. He continued his professional education in computer science at the University of California, Los Angeles and continued his training studying genomic targeting approaches to diseases. Here Damien discovered much inefficiency within academia. From this, he helped improved some of these hindrances by implementing systems that enabled the flow of research. This helped to seed his interest in research management, and in turn encouraged him to expand his knowledge by relocating to Boston. He has served as a scientific research manager for over 15 years and has supported some of the most prestigious institutions; Harvard Medical School, Stanford Medical School, Salk Biological Institute, Scripps Institute, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Institute, Broad Institute and many more. He is now the founder and lead consultant for Experimental Designs Consulting, Inc. The firm consults research investigators on the procedures and the organization of academic research management.