Catching on to Trends and Best Practices at SLAS2016 with This Year’s Show Program Chairs

SelectScience® spoke to Dr Dino Di Carlo, Program Co-Chair of SLAS2016 to get his expert recommendations on what not to miss at this upcoming show

Every year, the Society of Laboratory Automation and Screening invites its membership of over 18,000 scientists to “Come Transform Research” at its yearly conferences, held across the USA. SelectScience® spoke to one of the Program Chairs of SLAS2016, Dr Dino Di Carlo, ahead of the conference later this month, to find out key themes he’s expecting to see this year, and why SLAS is the place to be. Plus, read our interview with Dr Di Carlo’s Co-Chair, Dr Douglas Auld.

“There is always something new to see”, explained Dr Di Carlo. “The program committee works hard to make SLAS a unique blend of industry, academics, and government attendees and presenters that you can't find anywhere else.” This year, SLAS is visiting San Diego, USA, bringing scientists “innovative developments on the technology and application side, as well as commercial players that have brought products to market”.

In particular, Dr Di Carlo mentioned some interesting themes for this year’s conference: “we have a session and keynote speaker devoted to automation in extreme environments, from deep underwater to Mars, which should really make folks think about the unique challenges and solutions that can be developed, and hopefully spark new ideas,” he revealed. “Microfluidics also continues to be highly visible in our technical program”, and is one track that Dr Di Carlo is sure to attend. “Our group is engineering new systems, diagnostic devices, and therapies that will directly improve patient well-being. By exploiting the quirky physics at the microscale, we aim to simultaneously reduce costs and enable new modes to diagnose and treat disease,” Dr Di Carlo explained.

Turning ideas into products

Checking out “newest startups in the field that are bridging the gap between idea and product” is something else Dr Di Carlo is really looking forward to. Innovation AveNEW is an initiative by SLAS to give start-up companies the opportunity to actively engage in a world-class event to grow their business and directly connect them with influencers and decision-makers from more than 40 countries. If you’re academic, you can also “learn how to make your work more relevant and able to reach people sooner”.

“Automation is critical for almost everything we do”, explained Dr Di Carlo. From “developing next-generation flow cytometers to fabricating large quantities of uniform gel microspheres to fill a wound, technologies to accelerate or automate tedious processes underlie all technological progress”, and Dr Di Carlo thinks he has the explanation: “people are fundamentally lazy!”

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