Technician Week 2024: Life inside HTPU microarray services with Facility Manager Alison Munro
Facility Manager Alison and her Research Technician colleague Camilla Drake work in a bright south facing lab on the first floor of the South Building housing cutting edge protein, antibody and transcriptomic microarray facilities together with a family of cacti called Dr Spike Pickles, Prick Jagger, Cactniss Evergreen and Maximus Cacticus.
What was your route to becoming a technician?
My career has swayed from technician to academic and back to technician.
I graduated from the University of Glasgow with a BSc Hons in Microbiology in 2000 and shortly after started working at the Vet School in Glasgow as a junior technician for David Argyle. In one-and-a-half years, I gained a lot of valuable knowledge in a variety of techniques.
I moved from animals to humans to be a research technician for John Bartlett at Glasgow Royal Infirmary working on clinical trials for breast and ovarian cancer. When he relocated to the University of Edinburgh in 2006, I moved with him.
At that point I became a research assistant and an academic. I was encouraged to do a lot more of my own research, including a Masters in Molecular Predictors of Anthracycline Sensitivity in Breast Cancer.
When John left to go to Toronto in 2013, I started working for Neil Carragher as a senior research assistant working on collaborations with pharmaceutical companies.
This facility officially formed in 2017 and Kenny (Kenneth Macleod) and I worked as a team getting the services up and running. I took over the full management when Kenny retired in 2022.
What does your typical working day look like?
The first port of call is to turn the radio on and catch up with Camilla about the day ahead. Radio 2 used to the channel of choice but since Camilla joined it’s usually Radio 1 we listen to. I do like to switch it back for the music quiz at 10.30am though.
Apart from that, there isn’t really an average day. This job often involves a lot of firefighting – from lab management of Neil’s research group, to dealing with reports of floods, unexpected lab tours, broken equipment – the list goes on. You can try your best to plan, but it quite often changes.
My role in the facility is to ensure the smooth running of all the services, be hands on in the lab running samples, and also to line manage Camilla. Neil is still my line manager as he’s the academic lead of the facility. He is there to support me when needed, but he trusts me to be independent and to make decisions on the day-to-day running of the facility.
Day-to-day, I do a lot of organising of the schedule of services and contacting clients. I’m quite an organised person so I like that side of things. Camilla and I share the lab work but I also do a lot of the paperwork from invoicing, to preparing contracts for external clients, and more recently writing equipment bids which is definitely a new challenge.
How does your educational background help you in your job?
I like the fact I have got a mixture of both technical and academic experience. It suits me to have the understanding from both sides.
There are lots of technical aspects to this job where we have to be specialised in the protocols and the equipment, and give advice to customers – which includes understanding what the person is trying to do with their research and how to evolve it in the facility.
I also like to see the analysed results from experiments, and to read the final papers produced from our work. In the last couple of years, I have been asked to peer review papers which is something I am keen to find time to do.
I generally prioritise the lab work for Camilla but at the same time I’m reluctant to give it up completely as I don’t want to lose those skills. I have 24 years’ experience in so many different techniques and it would be a shame not to utilise them fully.
That’s a good thing about being a technician – the variety of what you learn and the hands-on experience you gain over time which is extremely valuable.
Alison Munro in HTPU Microarray Services lab
What’s your favourite part of the job?
I like the flexibility and the variety of the job. My favourite part of lab work is interacting with the customers. We have such a wide variety of customers from industry, drug discovery companies, people from other campuses and external academics throughout the UK, Europe, Australia and the USA.
For these industry customers we find our strength is that it’s cheaper and generally faster to run through academic facilities. We benefit a lot of different people and it’s nice to feel appreciated.
I have been working with some people for a number of years and I will happily go the extra mile if I can help. If there’s a strict deadline, we will be as flexible as we can be in our approach to meet them. I’m most definitely a people pleaser. I like to go above and beyond and get data back to customers quickly. I’m always a little sad when people don’t get the results they hoped for.
Do you have a favourite machine?
The two NanoString nCounter machines are my favourite. When I first started in the facility, I would be solely responsible for running that service. I really like the technology – I like the way it works and the robustness of the data, even with difficult samples. The results from nCounter always seem to make people happy.
In total we have three NanoString machines; The GeoMx is called George, Zippy scans the data and is named so as he creates zip files, and Bungle is called that because if anything goes wrong with nCounter it will be because of him. Those of a certain age will recognise where those names came from.
George can also be a tad glitchy. It’s great technology but on days of big experiments, I sometimes have to stay at work late to wait for him to do what he’s doing. It’s always a Friday afternoon when he decides he doesn’t want to open up and give back the slides and samples. It’s easier to shout at a machine when you’ve got a name to call it.
Would you recommend this as a career?
Yes, I would like to see it recognised more as a viable career in academia. When I went to university, I knew I didn’t want to do a PhD as I don’t think it’s the only career path. If you do a PhD, you can sometimes be stuck with a route you can’t get out of. I think there’s more variety in the types of careers a technician can have. There is also less pressure to move jobs to further your career, which can suit some people, myself included.
I think there should be a technician in every lab. Technicians are invaluable and offer experience and a vast array of skills. You’re a point of contact for people to come for guidance on protocols and how to do things in a lab technically, and you hold many tips and tricks that you gain with hands-on experience.
We’re very good at troubleshooting and optimising things. Technicians become a staple in a building – they build up a knowledge over so many years. It’s extremely valuable to have people that stay and progress within one Institute.
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