Eppendorf AG
Company profile
Eppendorf is a leading life science company that develops and sells instruments, consumables and services for liquid handling, sample handling and cell handling in laboratories worldwide. Its product range includes pipettes and automated pipetting systems, dispensers, centrifuges, mixers, spectrometers and DNA amplification equipment as well as ultra-low temperature freezers, fermentors, bioreactors, CO2 incubators, shakers and cell manipulation systems. Consumables such as pipette tips, test tubes, microplates, and single-use bioreactor vessels complement the range of highest-quality premium products.
Eppendorf products are most broadly used in academic and commercial research laboratories, e.g., in companies from the pharmaceutical and biotechnological as well as the chemical and food industries. They are also aimed at clinical and environmental analysis laboratories, forensics and at industrial laboratories performing process analysis, production and quality assurance.
Eppendorf was founded in Hamburg, Germany in 1945 and has more than 3,300 employees worldwide. The company has subsidiaries in 26 countries and is represented in all other markets by distributors.
Problem
As an international company operating in the field of life sciences, Eppendorf AG aims to help shape the future, and thereby the working and research environment, in the laboratory. To do this, it is necessary to anticipate customers’ requirements and wishes and to fulfill these using innovative products.
Areas of focus here include sustainability, digitalization, and the development of a creative and pleasant working environment.
Digitalization is already playing a big and ever-increasing role in the laboratory. In doing so, it does not just relate to the networking of devices and the digitalization of lab data, but is also about developing new workflows, standards, and methods that facilitate the scientific work performed by research-based pharmaceutical companies, biotech firms, and academic laboratories. With regard to pharma and diagnostics, but also to the area of medical analytics in general, standardization and quality assurance is, of course, an important issue.
New workflows and digital applications (artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics, virtual lab) will be of the utmost importance in the laboratory of the future.
In the laboratory of the future, new methods in life sciences, biotech, diagnostics, and pharmaceuticals will be inextricably linked to an increasing wealth of data that will have to be managed and analyzed. New standards and algorithms will have to be developed here not just to process this data, but also to analyze it and to decipher its complexity. “Big data,” data analytics, software development, and digitalization will therefore play a role of outstanding significance – and it is precisely here where we want to start with our project.
Aim of the project
The aim consists of designing a model for the “Smart Lab of the Future.” Both the development of workflow and integrative product ideas as well as shaping the research environment of the future in a way that is creative, open, and digital are among the aims. The work to achieve these concerns new concepts for the physical and virtual laboratory.
Together, we are looking for concepts and answers to some of the questions, such as:
- Which technologies will follow today’s standards in the field of life sciences?
- Will we be able to perform fully automated microbiotic analyses in every lab or in every doctor’s practice in the future, in order to diagnose and then – in an automated way – to suggest therapeutic approaches?
- Which global, multidimensional datasets are required for a “Smart Lab of the Future”?
- How can – in the case of global projects – crowdsourcing (e.g. for clinical samples) support international consortia?
Task
Within the scope of the project’s aim, trends and developments in the area of scientific, analytical, and clinical diagnostic laboratories are to be identified, illustrated, and further developed.
Digitalization will further increase the speed of innovations in the laboratory of the future. For Eppendorf, it is essential to be “future ready” both in the physical as well as in the virtual lab of the future.
In this project, we want to develop the tools that we need to achieve this – strategically, analytically, and in each instance with vision and “blue sky thinking.”
Target group
All students who, using creativity and imagination, would like to develop a vision relating to the problem outline above. Experience in the day-to-day work of a laboratory is beneficial but is not a requirement. An interdisciplinary team would be ideal.
Dates
Please reserve these dates: Fishing for Experience Termine
Registration
You can apply here for Fishing for Experience.
