A day in the lab with two Admescope technicians

We are both early birds, waking up around 6am. While the other starts the morning by taking the dog for a walk followed by a bike ride to work, the other one drives kids to daycare and then goes for ice swimming. Yep, it is winter time in Finland

The day at work begins around 8-ish by planning the day’s activities based on the instructions study directors gave on a previous day, or alternatively early in the morning. By the way, did you know that all our laboratories and meeting rooms are named by trees? Our home lab is “Willow”. In willow, as well as in the other labs, it’s pretty much hard work right away so that we can generate samples to the chemists on time for afternoon.

“Usually our work is well designed and scheduled beforehand, but sometimes we face unexpected situations. Like today I started to prepare a hepatocyte experiment in the cell culture lab, but it turned into an R&D experiment instead of customer projects as the compounds didn’t arrive as scheduled.”, says Marika.

We are happy to have a job with a variety of different activities. “I love to work with the liquid handling robot and especially plan and design new methods for it. I also enjoy making different Excel templates that also my colleagues can use to speed up our everyday routines. Various laboratory tasks keep the mind lively.”, says Katri. Marika’s favourites are all kinds of incubations – precise and accurate work. Although we are team players, most of the time we work individually and sometimes also in pairs.

Our break room is called “Birch”. It is the place for lively discussions and good laughs over a cup of tea or coffee. It also serves as a lunch room for those of us who bring our own lunch to work (even when biking). There we have some brain games, sometimes a puzzle or a quiz for the day if one wants to have relaxing activities during the break time. We might also do some stick exercises, if schedule allows, as it is really good for our shoulders – helps avoiding any problems in the neck and upper back.

In the afternoon it is time to deliver the samples to chemists. Then we make sure all the notes are written in to the laboratory books, clean up the bench and get prepared for the next day in the Willow-lab. Willow is actually the newest addition to our facilities, but has already a homey feeling to it with its large windows with snowy forest view.

Written by Marika & Katri

PS. When our chemist Heidi is not here, taking care of the aquarium is our task!