Q&A with Dr. Joel Wurman-Rodrich, Automation Scientist @ LabGenius
Hey! Who are you and where are you from?
Hello! I’m Joel, and I was born and raised in Santiago de Chile, in South America.
What’s your profession, and how did you end up doing it?
I am a Molecular Biotechnology Engineer with a PhD in Biochemistry, from the University of Cambridge. My research has focussed in plant sciences and cell-wall polysaccharides.
I’ve always been interested in understanding how things work, and learning how to make things work. This is why I decided to change the path of my career and join LabGenius.
What do you do at LabGenius, and how does that contribute to its success?
Here at LabGenius, I’m a part of the automation team, and my role is to automate the protocols that we commonly use in the wet lab. Two great advantages of having automated protocols are: first, we can scale up our procedures to process a large number of samples at the same time, and secondly, the great reproducibility inherent to using robots. They make many fewer mistakes than us humans!
What’s the biggest challenge in the work that you do?
I have to constantly think outside of the box here, especially as the automation team sits between scientists and engineers whose mentality can be quite different. I’ve had to learn to think and communicate in both languages!
What’s your proudest moment at LG?
I developed an automated protocol to prepare libraries for Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) without getting any cross-contamination! I succeeded where three others before me had failed, so that felt quite good! :D
Why should others join your team? Why should anyone work at LabGenius?
What I most like about LabGenius is the people. People here note and appreciate when one makes valuable contributions. Everyone is super clever and knowledgeable in their areas, which exposes me to many interesting topics. I’ve learned so much here, and continue to do so!
How do you balance your career at LabGenius with life outside work?
Because there is no set schedule, I can be very flexible when managing my own hours. I can work till late some days and come home early other days.
We also play football, tennis and go wall-climbing sometimes!
What advice would you give any candidates applying to work here?
Show and demonstrate your interests, be open minded. We’re a good bunch!
