New Matter: Inside the Minds of SLAS Scientists
The official Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening (SLAS) podcast explores advances in automation, cellular imaging, big data and what's coming in the spaces between traditional scientific disciplines. Guests often include members of SLAS along with innovators, leading experts and other members of the global scientific community to highlight technology and even career stories. Episodes are released every week and subscribe to New Matter - available on all podcast players.
New Matter: Inside the Minds of SLAS Scientists
SLAS Europe 2023 | Interviews with Tony B. Award and Student Poster Award Winners
Recorded straight from the SLAS Europe 2023 exhibit hall floor – New Matter host, Hannah Rosen, Ph.D., and SLAS Scientific Director Lesley Mathews, Ph.D., speaks with winners of the Tony B. Award and the Student Poster Award!
Congratulations to our winners!
(Listed in interview order)
Tony B. Travel Award
Ádám Wolf, Ph.D. Student (Óbuda University)
Towards robotic laboratory automation Plug & Play: The “LAPP” framework
Marisa Parra López, Predoctoral Researcher (University of Granada)
A multidisciplinary approach for the identification of Tsg101 UEV ligands with potential as novel broad spectrum antivirals
Natalia Karczewska, Research Biologist (Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences)
Evaluation of the bioactivity of compounds using Cell Painting assay and alternative High-Content assays
Student Poster Award
Morgan Dennis, Ph.D. Student (University of Nottingham )
How Can Membrane-based Assays Revolutionise Drug Discovery for G Protein-coupled Receptors?
Qian Wei, Ph.D. (Oslo University Hospital)
High-Throughput Screening of Small Molecules Targeting FoxP3 in Regulatory T Cells for Cancer Treatment
What is the Tony B. Travel Award?
This annual travel grant program provides funding for the SLAS International Conference and Exhibition and the SLAS Europe Conference and Exhibition for students, graduate students, post-doctoral associates, and junior faculty with less than four years in their first academic appointments.
What is the Student Poster Award?
Student posters presented during the SLAS International Conference and Exhibition and SLAS Europe Conference and Exhibition are judged on quality and relevance. Student poster presenters are all eligible for the Student Poster Competition, in which the top three posters are recognized. Winners, up to three, receive a cash prize of $500.
Visit our Student Resources to learn more about these awards.
Stay connected with SLAS
About SLAS
SLAS (Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening) is an international professional society of academic, industry and government life sciences researchers and the developers and providers of laboratory automation technology. The SLAS mission is to bring together researchers in academia, industry and government to advance life sciences discovery and technology via education, knowledge exchange and global community building.
Upcoming SLAS Events:
SLAS Europe 2025 Conference and Exhibition
- 20-22 May 2025
- Hamburg, Germany
Hello everyone and welcome to New Matter, the SLAS podcast, where we interview life science luminaries. I'm your host, hannah Rosen, and this week we are bringing you on-site to the 2023 SLAS European Conference to hear all about the research and the conference experiences from some of our Tony B award winners, as well as our two student poster award winners.
Hannah Rosen:Well, i'm here on the exhibition floor with Adam Wolfe, one of our Tony B award winners. Thank you so much for taking some time to sit down and talk to me today. So, to start off with, can you describe the project that you're presenting at the conference here?
Ádám Wolf:Thanks, laphs, for the opportunity. I'm really glad to be here. So at the conference I'm presenting our concept called the laboratory automation plugin play framework, which is intended to be a blueprint to make the integration of lab automation systems easier, especially focusing on lab robotics, supportive lab robotics. To be more specific, this means sample transportation, for example. So we are outlining a hierarchy called the composition of the workflows and assigning elements of this decomposition to layers of the cultural hierarchy control architecture.
Ádám Wolf:Additionally, we also outline an information representation model, sort of like a digital twin, again focusing on robot relevant information, mainly the positions, and the idea is that a device van lore should populate the digital twin prototype for that specific device with relative geometrical information within the context of the device. That means that an optical marker on the front side of the device should let the robot bind its own frame reference to the frame of reference of the device And then, with the help of digital twin information, the internal positions. The robot should be capable of planning the motion to delegate or apply, for example, to the device. Very important aspect, additionally, is communication protocols. So that's the connection to my other hats besides being a PhD student, namely leading the robotics working group with the CELAC organization. That's where we work on unifying feature definitions, also creating the ontologies to implement elements of that framework.
Hannah Rosen:Wow, that's really cool. That's a lot. How was your experience in applying for and receiving the Tony D award?
Ádám Wolf:It was a pleasant surprise. I applied last year also And I guess after now, having published two journal articles. it's technology. It's a great opportunity for me to engage with the community and to be there physically, to acquire new connections, maybe even find new ways to collaborate with people using the CELAC consortium as a forum And also my other hat with the universities.
Ádám Wolf:I have an academic background also and an industry of my grounds, working for our second public company, so for me it's like a really intense experience being here and then really grateful to have won this award.
Hannah Rosen:That's wonderful. Yeah, so you mentioned your PhD students and then you're also working with. So can you tell where you're getting your PhD, where university you're working at? and then how have you come to be wearing so many hats?
Ádám Wolf:So I actually have a background in mechatronics and robotics and by accident I got acquainted with Life Science Institute of Pharmaceutical Industry when I started my PhD with Takeida in Vienna and I was looking for a supervisor, and that's when I went back to Hungary. I am where I'm originally from and with the University I started this industrial PhD program. That's very much connected to my day-to-day activities at Takeida as an engineer in the digital laboratory and also the SILA hat is in line with the vision of making fly-and-play integration for lab robots possible.
Hannah Rosen:That's so cool. So what are your future?
Hannah Rosen:plans for this research.
Ádám Wolf:My future plans are really to make it happen, make this vision happen by creating reference implementations, both with the OBD University, with other academic collaborators, with the SILA Concertsium and, very important, with In Takeida. There I now have a full-time role in the digital laboratory and I'm leading global proof concept projects in the topic of mobile manipulation, so that sets the track for me.
Hannah Rosen:So how does that feed into your long-term career goals?
Ádám Wolf:Yeah, so wearing these three hats is something that I want to keep on the mid-term and long-term too, to be a bridge between academia and the industry, continue doing research and development, having the ability to play with different technological solutions, implement them in a real-life scenario, and I think I am at the right place right now.
Hannah Rosen:That certainly sounds that way, sounds very exciting. So give us a little bit about how has your experience been at the Europe 2023 conference so far.
Ádám Wolf:Awesome, very intense, to be honest, going back and forth between the exhibition area, the poster area and the planning sessions, talking to a lot of great people, great minds, learning about approaches, new concepts and also getting feedback on my research very valuable input. So again, i'm very grateful to be here, as it's going to be Charles Edwards winner.
Hannah Rosen:Great. Well, we are just thrilled to have you here. I can tell you that I'm thrilled that you took the time to sit down and talk to me for a little bit and I got to know you a little bit better. And you know, i look forward to seeing where this exciting research goes and hopefully we'll see you at future SLES conferences.
Ádám Wolf:I hope so. Thank you very much for having me.
Hannah Rosen:I'm on the exhibition floor with Marisa Parolópez, one of our Tony D award winners at Europe 2023 International Conference. So can you just start off? just describe a little bit of the project you're presenting at the conference here.
Marisa Parra López:I'm presenting a multidisciplinary approach combining biophysical study with high-to-blue methodology instead for Liga of the SG-101uEV with potential as novel breast. The total project involves the sale of Liga for 3-cellular protein, but here I focus on one of the DSG. I am presenting a multidisciplinary approach combining biophysical studies with Heiztukru methodology in the Shaffer Liga of THG100V UVV with potential as November's first of the spent to antivirus. The total project involves the sale of Liga for 3-cellular protein, but here in focus on one of them, thg. Many viruses present in virally-domains. They are short and conserved prolineal risk sequences. The interaction between PTAV virally-domains with THG UVV is essential for the body of enviroment viruses such as Evola or HIV, so the inhibition of the interaction has been proposed as a target for the development of antivirus.
Marisa Parra López:This project began with the study of this protein and her interaction with natural ligands through biophysical study. Later with a display, we have demonstrated that higher binding affinities is attainable by a small part size. This led us to the next step, to explore the drugability of THG100V with binding interface. For it we have done a high-superior screen screening of different levels of compounds, drug-repurposing libraries and Medina collection of natural products. We have selected a set of compounds. We have seen 550 values in the low macromolar range. Finally, we validate these compounds. Thanks to our collaborators, we have done an assay. Finally, thanks to our collaborators, we validate the activity of this compound in a cellular context with full-length proteins and viral virus-like particle assay and life viruses. Finally, definitely, i am presenting here a different strategy for the development of the OJ-Bentron antivirus.
Hannah Rosen:Awesome, that's so cool. So how was your experience in applying for, and then receiving, the Tony B award? It?
Marisa Parra López:was a very nice experience. I am very happy that I had the opportunity of sharing my research by my best poster presentation on Flagstacks. This was a very exciting moment because it was the first time that I showed my research of an audience and it was me very proud. I am very grateful by the world that has allowed me to grow as a professional and to be here having a good time with you.
Hannah Rosen:Awesome, we're so happy to have you here. So what are your future plans, if any, for this research?
Marisa Parra López:First, i have pending to do the screening of natural products. I am very lucky to collaborate with Medina Foundation. They have one of the larger and more chemical diverse collections in the world, with more than 200,000 microbial stacks. It's impressive. And also I will test the compounds in vital life particles and in life viruses, as I mentioned, and at the same time I will do the metaphysical characterization of the binding of the selective compound to our target. Finally, we want to do proteomic study to evaluate the possible toxicity and side effects of our compound after targeting our cellular proteins For it. Recently a research expert in proteomics has joined our department, so we want to take advance of this opportunity Awesome absolutely as you said.
Hannah Rosen:So what is your current research position?
Marisa Parra López:I'm a PhD student in my second year in physical chemistry department, University of Granada, under the supervision of Irene Luque. Also, I spent so much time in Medina Foundation. I have a lot of colleagues and excellent collaborators and supervisors. I am very lucky to work in this team.
Hannah Rosen:What are your long term career goals?
Marisa Parra López:Well, it's difficult for me to think on a long term because I am in a very intense stage with a lot of things to do and to learn. But I would like to continue in rediscovery field, maybe moving to industry, because I have always been interested in using my skills and knowledge to make a positive impact in the world and in people's lives, and also I enjoy my time in academia. I think that academia and industry will allow me to do this in a in a large scale.
Hannah Rosen:Definitely So. how has your experience been at the Europe Play 23 conference? so far, great.
Marisa Parra López:It's always beautiful and fantastic. I like so much the short course about high content screening And I am going to a very interesting talk or test presentation on exhibition. It's impressive the automation technology that I am seeing. Of course, i am taking this opportunity to do networking, sharing my research, sharing our curiosities Always great. I am very, very, very happy to be here.
Hannah Rosen:Wonderful Well, thank you so much for taking some time to sit down and talk to me today. It's been a real pleasure getting to know you a little bit more And we look forward to seeing your journey in the biosciences And hopefully we'll see you at some more SLIS conferences. Thank you so much.
Hannah Rosen:Hello everyone.
Hannah Rosen:I'm here on the exhibition floor with Natalia Karchebska, one of our Tony B award winners. Thank you so much for speaking with me, so can you describe a little bit of what the project is that you're presenting at the conference here? Yeah, so I've heard also about the evaluation of biosciences compounds using self-dainting technology, as well as alternative high-content studies. So in our center we use self-dainting technology in a high-proof matter, where we use it to perform screening of high-proof compounds, because we are part of the EU conference and we're a search channel which distributes and at the same time, we also develop other high-content studies that will be searched for different SSI And we also use maybe to try more changes than what's literally a self-file of this stuff. That's great. So how was your experience applying for the Tony B award? So it was something really new to me because I just started my work in this field, but overall, I had to prefer presentation regarding self-dainting the same as I made it on this essay.
Hannah Rosen:So it was really fun but also really kind of stressful for me because it was something new. But I guess it went OK. That's how I would say so. So what are your future plans for this self-dainting research? We want to expand, actually, our work because we want to optimize the self-dainting essay on different cell lines and try different cell lines and also expand the project on this and try different compound libraries as well And, as I said, i introduced new dye also for the other type of students at the site. So I just want to develop the essay, make it bigger and better, excellent, excellent. So what is your current position? So currently I'm working with the Center for Tighter Foot of Techary in the course of solenoid評atory.
Hannah Rosen:As a biologist I'm a biologist Great. What are your long term career goals? I'm looking for, actually, maybe to apply for PhD in the future because I just recently got my PhD thesis. So, yeah, i'm looking for to apply for PhD and also expanding in the field of drug discovery, especially the health care Excellent. So how has your experience been at the Europe 2023 conference so far? It was really awesome so far and I'm really grateful that I came down here and to see this big conference, because actually, i was in the 12th conference before and it's great to actually hear different perspectives from different people and to inspire different sciences and to present also my work Awesome. Well, we're so glad to have you here and so glad that you've been able to have this experience, and thank you so much for taking some time out of the busy schedule to come and talk to me. This is Leslie Matthews. I'm here on the exhibition floor at Europe 2023 with Morgan Dennis, one of our student poster award winners. Morgan, first, congratulations on your win. How do you feel about the winning of the award? I'm really quite shocked. I just started my PhD, so I didn't think that I would be selected to win, but I'm just really proud of what I've done and also congratulating everyone as well. It's just been a really, really fun small experience.
Hannah Rosen:What was the type of research that you were working on for this project? So the research was some work that I did during my master's degree in nursing and I was trying to create a membrane based acid that would allow us to look at research activity. Research is taxing them to using a intact functional gene protein. What future plans do you have for this research? So I'm currently now doing my PhD and I'm looking at the development as far as the tribes for obesity and adrenus hector in the lab and shaleage industry. So I'm not sure where that will come into my research, but it's something that I definitely hope to back up, possibly tie in. But also my two years lab, the lab of gene-fickering cells, hopes that you'll continue to use it and hopefully I'll still be seeing some work on it, which might also not be set in each as well.
Hannah Rosen:So you said it was cannabinoid reception. Yes, so did you see how maybe that can relate to anything on the floor here with automation? Yeah, so, just generally, it was just really cool to see all the different vendors and everything like that, and it was just really cool to see. I didn't necessarily think that I've heard a lot of stuff that I say, but just generally, it's so cool to see everything and just so many innovative things.
Hannah Rosen:I've never thought. You're a PhD student now, yep. What are your plans and aspirations for the future? I'm still exploring my avenues. I've got quite a long way to go.
Hannah Rosen:I'm just starting my journey, but I'm looking at both academic and industrial positions so I'm still a bit undecided, but, yeah, i'm just going to see what this is going to take. Like I mentioned to the other awardee, if you have any questions about industry experience or your path in general and more than happy to talk to you about that have it come from that field And how was your experience at the Europe 2023 conference? It was really really good fun. I think it was definitely a lot bigger than I thought it would be. Yeah, i think it sort of blew me away how many people are on the earth and how many different connections I've been able to make, and also just the difference in variety and just the different technology. It's just really good fun, really good insight into sort of level automation as well. So it's a really good fun. Thank you for your feedback on that as well. Yeah, congratulations, stay traveled. See you later.
Hannah Rosen:I'm here with the winners of the student poster awards on the floor from SLAS 2023 Europe. Tian Wei is one of our winners. Tian, will you tell us a little bit about the project that you were working with? Yeah, i'm working with one of my students And my project is working on prices with small molecular goods, including POP23, in regulatory sales for tens of millions of dollars, and what are your future plans for this research, as I can see from my poster that I have an ongoing project to finish a lot of new bloodstreaming. There are around 30,000 pom-poms. I will be working on melody in the Kennedy School of this library, so I would like to keep working on this project to find what kind of music we can use for the future cancer in the dark. I think my civilized in the Queenland is supporting you a lot for the project And you like to keep me in the land? Yeah, so currently, what's your position? Yeah, i'm a hostess. You're a post-doc. Yeah, i remember those days.
Hannah Rosen:It's a lot of work In the future. What are you thinking your career goals might be? I'm now just up to join this meeting. I'm also thinking about probably to try to look for opportunities in the street, because my project is very much in the hit to the John Vicks Gallery, so I think it should be very interesting for me to look around in the industry to find some holiday companies And also to try to learn how to develop the new big equipment Wonderful. If you need any advice, i'm more than happy to talk about it as someone who's gone through the process of being an industrial representative, so we can talk later too.
Hannah Rosen:How is your experience at the conference? overall, then? I'm feeling very excited to join this conference. It's my first time to join this last meeting, and it's on my expectation that I can see so many exhibitions and so many companies that show a lot of new techniques, and also there are very good scientific traditions. I can learn what other people are doing, not only in the research field, but also in the industry, and I guess I just have one last question for myself would be where do you think the next steps are with CARTSEAS CARTSEAS?
Hannah Rosen:Yeah.
Hannah Rosen:I think it's mainly it will be known for pre-saccharism, personalized medicine Yeah, personalized medicine, so really focusing on the patient and what the patient can benefit from the CARTSEAS. And also, i think this should be like some development to make this CARTSEAS process well-working. That has now, yeah, if it's going to patients, it should be in rare pasts for staff to produce the CARTSEAS At last. Also, usually it can be injected back to the patients, so we need the efficiency. Okay, well, congratulations again, kieran, you're really nice to meet you. All right, i can close our interview.
