A dry lab is a wet lab is a lab
There, I got that out the way. Now let’s talk about why it matters.
I spent the last year getting my research group started. On day one, I had nothing. My current lab was used by the graduate students associations to store old furnitures, and finding a company that was approved by the university to sell computers took a few weeks of increasingly distressed phone calls.
Fast forwards a year later, things do look brighter. I have a dry lab to call my own, students in it, with decent computers. The furniture falls apart, the windows close sometimes, and most of the network outlets have been active for only a few weeks (if your guess is “after a few weeks of increasingly angry phone calls”, you guessed right). But we can work in it (I know, because I abandonned my comfy, well painted office to work with the students about 90% of the time).
I also have a server room. At least this is what I jokingly call it. I have a basement room with a server in it. Students don’t want to go in it after dark because of it rates impressively high on the creepy-gloomy scale. They are probably right.
The point I am trying to get to is the following: a dry lab is any room with computers in it. But it is also more than that. And therefore, the amount of effort it should take to get it up and running has nothing to do with the amount of effort I had to invest. Since I am not the only one in this situation, let me run you through some of the most frustrating points.
So, it’s just computers?
The first issue is that everyone and their grandma has a computer. In fact, my grandparent’s laptop is more powerful than mine. The difference is in the type of computers that I need in a dry lab. Multi-core, well cooled, high amounts of RAM machines with two large-ish screens. Not the type of machines you get from the university approved computer seller, and not the type you go buy at BestBuy either. It is of course even worse for the server.
So the logic you apply when you plug a desktop computer in does not hold for a computationaly intensive dry lab. If there are many power outages (check), windows that don’t close and make it likely that it can rain inside the room (check), accumulation of dust (check), or unscheduled maintenance operations that create more dust (check), this affects the survival of my machines. And as a starting PI, I don’t have pockets deep enough to replace them unless they are absolutely obsolete (which shouldn’t happen for years).
My lab isn’t full of impressive looking equipment. It is full of impressive but bland-looking equipment. I think this is an issue that many dry-lab-having people can relate to. You won’t hear “But it’s just a mass spec”, or “But it’s just a thermocycler”. I heard “But it’s just computers” or a variation thereof several times a week when discussing potential renovations.
But it’s just an office, right?
Yes. In the sense that there are desks (not yet) with chairs (not mine) and students (mostly mine) sitting at them in front of computers. So yes, it looks just like an office.
But this is not how it should be viewed. It should be viewed as research equipment, with researchers operating this equipment. This is the key issue I had managing a dry lab: it looks like an office, it looks like just computers, in a sense it is both of these things, but in actuality, well, it is far more than that.
Wait this costs how much?
Another of my favorites.
— For all of them, right?
— No, for a single one
— It doesn’t look right
— …
Every. Damn. Time.
Desktop computers, even laptops, are cheap. Machines you can use to do serious simulations, data processing, etc, are not.
In conclusion…
A dry lab is a lab, like a wet lab would be. Do you want to know the one single trick to get people to realize this an act accordingly?
Yeah. Me too…
