This episode of our "Lab of the Future" series focuses on the importance of collaborations in designing lab of the future products. Our guest is Biosero Chief Executive Officer Ryan Bernhardt, to share how Biosero collaborates with other companies and why more companies should get involved.
Key Learning Points:
Full transcript available on Buzzsprout.
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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 2024 Conference and Exhibition
SLAS 2024 Microscale Innovation in Life Sciences Symposium
SLAS 2024 Sample Management Symposium
SLAS 2024 Data Sciences and AI Symposium
This episode of our "Lab of the Future" series focuses on the importance of collaborations in designing lab of the future products. Our guest is Biosero Chief Executive Officer Ryan Bernhardt, to share how Biosero collaborates with other companies and why more companies should get involved.
Key Learning Points:
Full transcript available on Buzzsprout.
Take our Podcast Survey!
We want to hear from YOU to ensure we provide valuable content that reflects what our listeners and the SLAS community are interested in! Take our brief survey to help us learn how we can improve New Matter.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/BD7BC82
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 2024 Conference and Exhibition
SLAS 2024 Microscale Innovation in Life Sciences Symposium
SLAS 2024 Sample Management Symposium
SLAS 2024 Data Sciences and AI Symposium
Hannah Rosen:
Hello everyone and welcome to New Matter, the SLAS podcast where we interview life science luminaries. I'm your host, Hannah Rosen, and today we'll be continuing our series focusing on the lab of the future with Ryan Bernhardt, the Chief Commercial Officer of Biosero. Biosero was one of our Europe 2023 lab of the future companies, and Ryan is joining us today to discuss the importance of collaborations when designing products for the lab of the future. So, welcome to the podcast, Ryan.
Ryan Bernhardt:
Thank you very much, Hannah. Thank you for having me today.
Hannah Rosen:
It's our pleasure. So, to start us off, could you just give us a little bit about your professional background?
Ryan Bernhardt:
Absolutely. So, my formal education is in chemistry and business. At the time, I didn't know exactly how I would put both of those disciplines to use. But early on as part of my college career, I actually had an internship at a DNA sequencing core facility. It gave me a chance to get hands on with lab work, and part of that was learning how to use some sophisticated instrumentation in the laboratory. And one of the first instruments that I learned how to use was, at the time, an ABI 16 capillary DNA sequencer, and part of the work entailed preparing PCR reactions. So I would be pipetting patient samples and primers and master mixes to create the reactions. Needless to say, this was rather tedious in 96 well plate format. Each day I would spend a number of hours doing hand pipetting and trying to remember which components went into each well, and in and out of daydreaming, and you know, that sort of thing.
And so at the time, there was a Hamilton 4000 liquid handler that was collecting dust sitting over in the corner of one of the laboratories, and I was fascinated to learn what it did and actually taught myself how to program a liquid handler, and as part of the experience I was able to automate the preparation of these PCR reactions where not only did it probably transfer liquid more accurately or precisely than I did, but it also kept an audit trail of what was happening. And so that was really my first foray into using automation in a laboratory to do science, but what that did was really set the course of my career and what I was passionate about.
And so I went on from that opportunity to work for the agroscience division of the Dow Chemical Company, known at the time, as Dow Agrosciences, was in a laboratory doing a pesticide formulation. And part of the initiative for the next generation of that division was to create an automated screening facility for pesticide formulation, and the goal there was to try to be able to weed out possible combinations and really minimize the number of samples or possibilities that a formulation chemist would have to work on at the bench top. And so my experience in leveraging automation at the time got me an opportunity to be part of actually building out this automation lab that was going to be doing high throughput screening of these formulations. And so at the time there wasn't many people doing lab automation, and so I kind of became an expert by default and had a chance to put together a state-of-the-art facility with innovative instrumentation and integrated laboratory automation and the goal was really to transfer manual protocols that were being performed on the bench into automated protocols that could be run by robots.
As part of this, it really dawned on me that many of the principles that we think about and optimizing workflows for lab automation are really the same principles that you would think about from a business standpoint in terms of, how do you increase productivity; how do you reduce cost by miniaturizing the amount of materials that you're using; how do you extend the hours of operation; how do you essentially do more with less and then focus on higher quality results and minimizing mistakes, or at least being able to catch those mistakes? And so, this, at the time, was really something that I became passionate about in terms of process optimization and leveraging automation to force science with being able to also kind of check all the boxes that were important to me from a business standpoint. And so, this laboratory became very successful. We were able to bring on several different robots and manual protocols that were converted into being able to screen for a variety of different pesticide formulations. We were able to automate a variety of different tests, and what it enabled us to do was drastically reduce the costs of running these reactions and be able to whittle down the number of experiments that scientists were having to do on the bench.
And what I found really fascinating at the time was that I was able to spend time kind of programming and setting these experiments up and I'd be able to hit go and go to lunch and yet still be productive while I was at lunch, or start a reaction, start an experiment before I left for the day at 5:00, and then come back the next morning to a ton of data that I was able to look through and analyze. And so being able to just increase that productivity around the talk was something that really set the stage for the course of my career, which is has been a focus on lab automation and being able to automate scientific workflow. So, after that I had a chance to set up one of the first anaerobic microbial strain improvement laboratories for an alternative fuels company during the alternative fuels boom, the name of the company was Cascada.
And then I went on as part of that, due to my collaboration with Hamilton Robotics, I went on to take a role with Hamilton Robotics and started there doing applications in the Midwest, and then it moved into more of a sales aspect with application consulting scientist, and finally launched a global business unit for Hamilton. From there I had an opportunity to go lead the automation strategy for Eli Lilly and Company, and so I spent about 6 1/2 years there, and then the past two have been leading the commercial division here at Biosero. So, I've been on both sides of the technology provider side, but also on the automation user side of things for automating science.
Hannah Rosen:
Yeah, well, that's quite a resume. I mean, it sounds like you've really had the opportunity to see lab automation from kind of the very beginning stages and grow with it and see it develop into kind of the boom that we're at now.
Ryan Bernhardt:
Yeah, I feel I've been very fortunate to have the chance to leverage lab automation and the instruments and techniques in a wide variety of different scientific applications. And for me, that's something that's always been really, really fascinating, that although you may be performing very different science, a lot of the tools and techniques are very applicable, whether it's biology or microbiology or chemistry or clinical diagnostics, you can oftentimes leverage the same tools, the same techniques and same principles in those environments as well. So that's been something that's enabled me to, I think, through, you know, different areas of science and also position me to help customers and other adopters of automation in their laboratory setting.
Hannah Rosen:
Absolutely. So now that you are at Biosero, as you say, can you tell us a little bit about how are you, and everyone else at Biosero, viewing this concept of the lab of the future?
Ryan Bernhardt:
Absolutely. So, you know one thing that is more evident today than ever before is the rate of technology evolution. And so, this has been something, Biosero has been in existence for over 21 years, Biosero has evolved greatly during that time as well. Today, a big focus of lab of the future is around the orchestration of the entirety of the laboratory, and what this means is, it's really everything in the lab being able to harmoniously work together, and so this implies there's the digital connectivity or the digital integration of data that's coming and going from instruments or from ELN, LIM systems, inventory management system. But there's also the physical connectivity of devices, samples, reagents, people in the laboratory, as well as transportation.
And so the lab of the future for us at Biosero really is focused on that harmonious work extraction that is occurring in the laboratory. And it doesn't just stop there, but it's actually that activity with colleagues in other places of the campus, or even the world. I think one thing that is more evident than ever before is that we are in a very global society where we're working with colleagues halfway around the world, and that collaboration is necessary to increase the speed of innovation and accelerate solutions to the market. So for us, you know, we like to think we have a motto that says think globally, automate locally. And so for us it's about how do we automate locally in the laboratory, but then have those the integration and tethers to other sites, labs and campuses colleagues around the world.
Hannah Rosen:
Yeah. I mean, that's fantastic. And yeah, as you say, you know, now more than ever, especially with the focus on communication and connectivity between the labs, that aspect of collaboration is more important now than ever, I would say, and so I'd love it if you could kind of expand a little bit on the stance that Biosero is taking with collaborations, both with other companies that are potentially your competitors, but then also, you know, with your customer base.
Ryan Bernhardt:
Absolutely. In addition to the evolution of the technology advancing more rapidly than ever before. I think we also, you know, one of the things that came out of the COVID years was really this necessity on being able to do more in the absence of having people physically in the lab and then being able to have that transparency of what's actually occurring there, but it also meant being inundated with more samples than ever before. And so as that applied some pressure and stress on the industry and on the life science community, I think it also required everyone to adapt and think about it a bit differently. And so today, Biosero sees the laboratory and in our business very much through the idea of collaboration, and I think it's a focus on more on today where are our core competencies and where can we provide the greatest solution?
And then we look for partners that have already, you know, for what their core competencies are and what is it that they can provide better, I would say. And when I first started my career, there was very much a focus on a single vendor providing a single solution, for the entirety of the solution. And so you see, it saw a lot of companies that maybe started as a liquid handling company that really tried to provide everything from the liquid handler solution, also to the integration solution, and the software capabilities to run that. Today I think there's a real focus on what is the thing that we can provide maybe better than others, and what that has enabled is the fostering of this collaboration and partnerships in the laboratory. And so for us, Biosero had to make this shift where Biosero went away from being more of a manufacturer’s rep and repping other hardware solutions, to focusing really on our software solution as the foundation of our product offering. And with that we also perform actions that are really based on our software as being the brains of the operation. So that was something that that was part of our journey or lifespan was to really go through that same evolution. And we're seeing that across the industry now as we have opportunities to partner with leading instrument companies, leading software providers or LIMS providers, or ELN providers. We're seeing a lot more adoption of an openness to partnerships and, you know, where 1 + 1 = 3 is the best way to say it.
Hannah Rosen:
I'm curious to hear, you know, how is the dynamic changing with these collaborations? Because I feel like, you know, in the past it was very much a classic business model where you're providing a solution, you have another company that's trying to provide a similar solution, you're competing in that similar market space. And so there's a lot of secrecy and a lot of, you know, competition there. And do you feel like that is changing in the space now? And kind of, can you speak a little bit about, as the labs are becoming more automated and needing to integrate technologies from different providers, how is that changing the dynamic between similar companies?
Ryan Bernhardt:
It's a great question, and I go back to the speed at which technology is advancing. I think that really puts some pressure and constraints on companies to dial in and focus on what they're really good at, and they're more forced to leverage other innovative solutions that maybe address some of the capabilities that they don't have, or areas where they just don't have the resources or time to focus their attention, and that's very much what we're seeing or I'm seeing. And I've seen this evolution over the course of probably the last decade, but I think going through the period of the COVID pandemic really fast forwarded the industry 10 years or more, and the mindset and the paradigm shift around this. I also think life science companies are expecting more and more of this, and so that has been really healthy for the technology and lab automation industry is this idea that products should be built in a way where they're integration friendly, where they're set up, that they're actually going to be used in a manner where they're going to be connecting with other tools.
I think that was also one of the challenges 10 years ago was that there was a lot of instrumentation that had been designed and brought to market without full integration and full automation at the forefront of the design of the instrumentation. So what that meant was you had instrumentation that really wasn't geared to be leveraged as part of a collaboration or partnership with another vendor. There was also communication mechanisms missing like good APIs, robust APIs or user-friendly APIs. Today, those APIs are actually a standard practice, and they're expected to be part of the instrument solution, because they're being built with the foresight of being part of an integrated solution, which means it's going to be open to collaboration with others. So that's been a major shift.
And I think there's also more emphasis now on creating these in a way where they're open and they're consistent. So, you know, one of the things that's been kind of a joke in the lab automation world is that there wasn't a lot of standardization, very different from a manufacturing environment, where there's a bit of the Wild West in the laboratory. And so today it's great to see more and more focus on some standard practices and API's, we have the Sila 2, the Pistoia Alliance, you know, there's a lot of different initiatives that are pushing for standardize. They all really foster better partnerships, better collaborations across our industry. So, I think that's a really, really healthy sign.
Hannah Rosen:
Yeah, that's fantastic. Can you speak a little bit to the partnerships that you have had at Biosero? What are the advantages that you have seen in pursuing these partnerships and why is it something that you guys have put such an emphasis on?
Ryan Bernhardt:
Well, for us, we believe that our area of expertise and the value that we can provide is really at the software level and it's a hardware agnostic scheduling solution, and our latest product offering is really focused on the orchestration of the laboratory. So it's actually one level up from thinking about just the integrated work cell. Our focus on that has really enabled us to be more strategic and open to partnerships in terms of where areas, I think everyone has to be realistic with what it is that they can offer the market and for us, being able to offer a high quality liquid handler was not something that Biosero, as their value proposition, likewise, you know, an automated storage unit or whatnot. So, for us, we get our greatest value by being able to partner with industry leaders that do make the best liquid handler, the best storage unit, or the best incubator, high content imager. Likewise, there's areas of the software side of things that is not something Biosero has a solution or is pursuing, so being able to add on to, say, an asset management software or an inventory management software really extends the functionality and the benefits of our product offering, or where it is that we were able to provide the greatest value to our customers. We're absolutely always listening, we're always taking that feedback.
And so, a good example of where Biosero stepped in a few years ago to provide a solution where we didn't see it available in our space was in the area of mobile robots. So, in 2019, Biosero integrated a mobile robot solution because there wasn't one out there that was really geared for lab automation. But the purpose behind that was really that it was our software that was controlling it, so fast forward to today and Biosero is now partnering with many vendors who see the benefits of having mobile robots in the laboratory are listening to the market feedback. And so now we're able to work with vendors in this space to kind of help bring that to fruition, where at the heart of our solution is that it's our software that's controlling that. There's other vendors out there that may be better suited to provide, you know, the complete hardware capabilities, whether it's a cutting edge, high content imager. So we see it as an area that allows us to focus on what it is we do best and to accelerate the innovation while not getting distracted on the things where there's other companies out there that do a far better job than what we can do in certain areas.
Hannah Rosen:
Yeah, I think that's absolutely a fantastic perspective to have is, know your strengths and also know your weaknesses. I think that that's great. Yeah. What are some of the biggest challenges that you've found in establishing these partnerships?
Ryan Bernhardt:
Definitely one has been just the paradigm shift, the shift in thinking. As I mentioned, a decade ago it was always, we're going to do everything. I think that was really the approach in our space. Information today, it's been evolving over that time to starting to think differently about that. It's kind of that change management that's a bit of a challenge. I think it's also the absence of having those standards in place that everything is in some ways, you know, it's different the way you integrate with one device may be different than the way you integrate with a similar device. And so, it's having to think about the individual drivers that would be connected. I also go back to the comment I made about the lab automation having many instruments that have been this standard in our industry that have been on the market for 10, 15, 20 years and so those instruments are still largely deployed and used by scientists all around the world. And so, some of that provides a challenge when you're being asked to integrate instrumentation that was really never designed for full automation.
And what we're seeing is now this shift where the next generation of a lot of this instrumentation is starting to come out and it has been built in a way that it's designed for this integration and these collaborations and to be used in more fully automated environments, but we still have some of the legacy instruments as well. So that can create challenges. I also think as part of that design, a lot of instrumentation was really built where the level of automation that existed there was, we're going to build a bigger deck or we're going to build a bigger space to load samples so that a scientist can hit start and then walk away for longer. Today we're thinking very differently. It's no longer about can we buy two or three hours of walk away time for a scientist, but it's how do we actually run things overnight, how do we run things over a weekend?
And so there the level of automation goes up here drastically in terms of the robustness of instrumentation, the communication, the transparency. When something goes wrong, we need air handling and communications of being able to keep things running. You know, that paradigm shift in the laboratory has created challenges, but I think it's also created many opportunities for the industry to kind of step up and provide the next generation of innovation and solutions that are really set up to address many of the goals that we have in the life science industry, is how do we accelerate innovation to the market faster than ever before and at a more a minimal cost?
Hannah Rosen:
How often do you face pushback from companies that you maybe reach out to that you are interested in partnering with and, you know, do you often get pushback from those companies saying that, you know, we don't want to collaborate with you or, you know, we'll collaborate, but we're not comfortable sharing this information that you may need. And how does that impact your ability then to provide solutions that will work with those products?
Ryan Bernhardt:
It's a great question. Definitely occasionally that, you know, we still get that today. I would say largely we see a much more collaborative spirit across the industry and I think it's a really, really healthy indicator of what's to come in the future. I definitely think there is some space where there may be overlap, especially where, you know, instrument companies feel like they're providing this similar capabilities, there's definitely areas even in the software side of things where there's probably some gray areas of overlap as to what one company does, and another company may offer also be able to offer that, but most of the providers I think are really starting to recognize where their niche is and where their strengths are and, you know, when it makes sense to actually partner. And I think a big focus on these collaborations is that ultimately, it's the customer experience and it's being able to meet the customer's needs. And so for us it's always about what's the best solution going to be for the end user or the scientist. And I think that's where we recognize there's times where it makes sense for us to provide the entire solution, and there's other opportunities where it may be better suited that we provide a portion of it and we work together closely with another provider that already maybe has something figured out.
Hannah Rosen:
Yeah, well, it's really encouraging to hear that it seems like it's the rarity that you get that pushback rather than kind of the norm, which is that's great to hear.
Ryan Bernhardt:
And I also think another thing that really helps is that the end user, the scientist or customer, we're seeing more and more customers that are actually coming and bringing us together to say, you know, Biosero we'd like you to work with company X or company Y to provide this solution. In fact, in my own career I did this at a level for the Lilly Life Sciences Studio. It was probably the first time in history where we took on a huge automation initiative and in that case, we didn't have one company that was able to provide the entire solution. We actually broke this very large project out into 16 different vendors and partners that we all asked and expected to work collaboratively together through our group, kind of managing those interactions. And I really think that's set a new precedence of what's possible and also the speed and the efficiency that can be gained through leveraging different partners for what they're really, really good at and being able to come together to to put that solution in place.
Hannah Rosen:
Yeah. Wow, that's awesome. What would be your advice to other companies out there who are trying to figure out how to maybe navigate a successful collaboration or partnership with another company?
Ryan Bernhardt:
I think it's important for definitely the scientist or the end user to understand that to do some, you know, due diligence and research upfront to understand where the different companies or partners would play in that space. Often times I do think historically the solution has been that we're going to pick a single vendor, they're gonna just handle everything for us. I think that's had mediocre success. I actually think the most successful projects have been where you leverage different companies for their strengths and maybe minimize their areas of weakness. And also one of the things I've found also having multiple partners involved in that collaboration really helps to hold everyone accountable. You know, no one wants to let their counterpart down and being, you know, not delivering. And so having some different collaborations and partnerships I think really helps to create a high quality solution where you know, go back to the 1 + 1 = 3. But I think that really is the paradigm, and so that's a big aspect of that. Yeah, I think it also helps to when companies collaborate like that, it also helps to build out some of the capabilities that may be missing as part of that. So, for example, when we work with other collaborators in the industry, we're oftentimes partnering with them to help them build out a more robust API or a better API that's geared for automation where we have more feedback loops as to what's happening or when an error pops up, we know exactly what that is, that may be something that they hadn't thought of, or that they didn't have the expertise to know. Likewise, there's things that that we benefit from through these collaborations and ultimately it ends up making a better solution, and not just for that that particular customer, but it makes a better solution for every customer of that in the industry moving forward through the work that we're doing in collaboration with one another.
Hannah Rosen:
You know, it's so interesting to me that you say that a lot of times it could be better to go with multiple providers cause you're playing to everybody's strengths, cause my intuitive thought would be, well, I should just go with one provider because I'm guaranteed that everything is going to work together and be integrated. And so, I think that, that actually might be a surprising thought to some people.
Ryan Bernhardt:
It's definitely been something that was, in my own career, was eye opening, and I've experienced, you know, the benefits and of both solutions. But I think oftentimes it seems like the least path of resistance is to just choose a single provider to do it all. The problem is, that also creates an issue, should something go wrong there and you may be asking that particular partner to bend in an area that they’re not the best solution or they don't have it all figured out. And so that for me, that was a major, you know, eye opening solution was to begin to think about it differently, where you start to think about the best solution being one that's collaborative and really brings multiple parties together and leverages their strengths and then helps to build up their weaknesses. And I also think it does set you up for risk mitigation as well, whereas if one partner is slipping or doesn't provide, it actually enables the other parties to specifically, still be able to to generate a viable solution, or even step in to mitigate that, and that's definitely not the case when you choose a single provider to do it all. If something goes wrong, it's going to impact everything.
Hannah Rosen:
Yeah, it certainly seems like with the situations where it may be easier initially to go with one provider, but in the long term you're going to get more benefits from going with multiple.
Ryan Bernhardt:
And I think why it may seem rare in the lab automation space, if you think about the rest of, you know, the world or business, this is actually pretty normal. When you're building a skyscraper, you use a general contractor that's going to bring in the best subcontractors for their particular trade or skills as opposed to doing it all, and so it's a bit of that paradigm shift. I think that when we look at these, the solutions we're putting in the laboratory where we see these as they're not one big solution, that's actually a solution that's made-up of several solutions that are coming together to create that, you know, that masterpiece.
Hannah Rosen:
Yeah, that's really interesting and that's a great comparison, I think, to comparing it to kind of, you know, the yeah, building a building and the architecture side of things. You had mentioned earlier a little bit about this move towards more standardization and how that's kind of helping with the collaborations. I'm curious, you know, do you feel like, are we getting to the point where we're starting to agree on certain standards? Cause I know even now there's multiple standards that can be used and so what is your sense for this move towards standardization and, you know, in some ways I'm sure it's making collaborations easier, but is it also potentially making things harder if you can't agree on a standard?
Ryan Bernhardt:
Really good question. You know, the idea of standardization isn't one that's new. It's been a common thread in the industry for quite some time. I do feel like we've made more progress now than ever before. And I think this comes to vendors being more willing to collaborate and work together. I also think a big push has been at the scientific or customer level that really setting those expectations, nes I also think solutions historically were built where they were kind of monolithic systems and they were intended to operate in that mentality for the entirety of their of their life cycle early on, you know, we brought in automation for high throughput screening labs, we brought automation in for compound management centers, things where we were going to be doing the same thing over and over again. And today, automation is necessary for it to be, you know, flexible and modular, probably more so than ever before. Oftentimes, projects are scoped and before they ever are fully implemented, the scientific portfolio may change or the strategy around what the automation is going to be used for may change, meaning we may need to swap devices, we may need to to shift.
And so I think that's where the standardization, and it is really important where it's being able to enhance flexibility and make the modularity and the usability of these systems over time easier, and easier definitely from the software perspective of Biosero, you know, riding drivers is an absolutely critical piece of the integration of these different instruments coming together, and so for us there's a big emphasis on standardizing communication protocols. So API's and how the data is generated and treating informatics adapters for LIM systems and ELNs, you know, we want to be able to seamlessly allow our end users to connect to these various systems, and today they may be using LIM system, you know, A, but tomorrow they may use LIM system B, and we want them to be able to seamlessly make those connections without the burden of huge additional costs and significant amount of down time because all of that essentially impacts the return on investment of automation and if you, you know, look even further down the road, it potentially impacts the benefits to patients or consumers of that innovation getting to the market.
Hannah Rosen:
Yeah, that's a great, great point. So, it's kind of just got to be prepared for everything is what it sounds like.
Ryan Bernhardt:
Yes and definitely I think the more the industry is coming together to push these standards and talk through this it's, you know, collaboration as well as I mentioned earlier we're also seeing now the next generation of a lot of instrumentation where some of this has already been baked into the design, and it's been thought about and I think that was one of the challenges historically, you know, there was a significant cost to go back and add some of these standards and functionality into to an older instrumentation design. But now when the new instrumentation are coming out, this has been something that has been designed as part of that solution. So that's good. And then I definitely appreciate anytime I hear customers and end users who are the ones, you know, purchasing these items in the lab or using the items in the lab where they're very adamant and vocal about seeing these standards come from the vendors that are providing the solutions. I think that that makes, you know, makes a big impact as well.
Hannah Rosen:
Yeah, absolutely. So when you're looking for a potential partner to collaborate with, you know, what do you look for in a partner and are you currently looking for any new partners now?
Ryan Bernhardt:
Absolutely. We're always looking for new partners and it's something that Biosero prides ourself in and we're really proud about being hardware agnostic. We're also software agnostic when it comes to the systems that we're connecting and we are actively and always looking for opportunities for collaboration and partnership. Typically we're looking for partners and collaborators that are industry leaders and what they can provide and we want to provide the best solution to our customers, we want the highest quality. Another big aspect of that is the customer experience. It's having the support that would be needed to ensure that these solutions are going to make the impact and going to have the return on investment that was expected from them.
And so we partner with robotics companies, we partner with, I mentioned earlier mobile robots, we're partnering with you know, liquid handling companies, storage company, and many, many opportunities now for even a lot of the digital orchestration technologies, whether that be connecting with LIS or building management systems. We're even controlling elevator systems. So we're working with companies like Otis elevators that are able to really extend the automation and the workflows that are traditionally they were happening on an instrument, then they went to a work cell, then it was, can we start to orchestrate the laboratory? Today we're orchestrating, you know, cross campuses and cross laboratories. And so as you begin to expand that scope, the number of collaborators goes up drastically, and, you know, even companies where you think, well, they're not really in the space in terms of elevators and building management systems and the opening and closing doors and lights and those types of opportunities that go really beyond the traditional instrument scientific instrument company.
So it's a really exciting time to be in lab automation. The growth of this industry is on a fantastic trajectory. And I think the lab automation is really key to providing the solutions to the challenges that we're all policing around the world and in this space, and if they go back to the whole COVID pandemic. But I think it really helped to show some of these constraints and get people thinking a little differently about how do we solve these challenges in the laboratory.
Hannah Rosen:
Yeah, great. Well, I mean, I think it's just awesome that you guys have such a forward-looking focus on collaboration and partnerships and that atmosphere. And, you know, I wanna thank you for coming on the podcast today and discussing those perspectives with us. And we really look forward to seeing Biosero at more SLAS events and hopefully we'll be able to help assist with some of those future partnerships.
Ryan Bernhardt:
Well, it's truly been my pleasure. Hannah. Thank you so much for having me. And we are excited to partner with SLAS and we're absolutely looking forward to future events and also looking forward to seeing all of the innovation that continues to be on display year after year. So, thank you again for having me.