Lab Math

In May, my colleague, Jeanette Mowery, and I presented an InnovATEBIO webinar: To Reduce Variability/Enhance Reproducibility: Begin at the Beginning . This is the first of two blogs about that webinar.

Before discussing the webinar, I’ll share a personal story. Many years ago I was thrilled to land a postdoc position in a cancer research laboratory where I worked on a project involving the role of DNA adducts in initiating breast cancer. One of the reagents that I required had a pH of 10, and it included a relatively high concentration of urea. This reagent frustrated... Read more

What Were We Thinking??

I recently read a blog in which the author tells this story: W. Edwards Deming (a “founding father” of total quality management) was getting ready to teach a four day seminar on quality improvement when an executive approached him. The executive said that he was too busy to attend the seminar and he asked Deming to save him time by summarizing Deming’s methods in a few words. According to the story, Deming responded... Read more

Hello! First of all, let's talk about last week. It's so good to be back working at Portland State University ! I don't know what it is about, but I love working in an academic environment. Those of you reading this that knew me twenty years ago, who would've guessed, right? So, yay, I am back at PSU (temporarily anyways).

My first day at the lab was a Monday. That's the day we have lab meetings. In this meeting, graduate student, Eric Iverson , presented about his project which involves testing all of the ORFs... Read more