Don't fear the robot: Lab automation for high-throughput discovery science

Join this webinar to learn how Carlos Goller has designed undergraduate and graduate courses to teach high-throughput discovery science and lab automation. Research-scale lab automation is not typically part of student courses, but Dr. Goller has made it his mission to integrate it into courses and undergraduate research experiences. He has an NSF-funded project to create a network of educators to build case studies teaching students about high-throughput approaches to drug screening, microscopy, sequencing, and other high-throughput applications with Dr. Sabrina Robertson at UNC Chapel Hill.

Dr. Goller uses the Opentrons OT-2 and Zymo Research kits, to automate nucleic acid extraction and RNAseq library prep. In this webinar he’ll present a case study describing the use of an group assignment to design a script to automate Zymo Research kits on the OT-2. With this challenging assignment, undergraduate and graduate students work in interdisciplinary teams to plan, research, and develop a JoVE.com style manuscript describing the automation of a process to address a biologically-relevant question. This assignment has been used for several years and refined with student and instructor feedback. Importantly, students learn about high-throughput discovery science and embrace new challenges with liquid handlers such as the OT-2.

 

Learning Objectives