Institute of Science and Technology (IST) Technical Conference 2018

Photo from left to right: Scott Denham (ECRF Mass Spec Core), Fiona Alderson, Caroline Delahoyde and Richard Blair (School of Engineering).

The annual IST Technical Conference was held this year in September in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne and a number of colleagues from the University of Edinburgh attended. The IST is the Professional Body for Technicians and it represent technicians across a wide range of disciplines from Science and Engineering to Arts, Media and IT.

During the Conference there were impressive Keynote presentations given on the topics of Bionics by Dr Kianoush Nazarpour (University of Newcastle upon Tyne) and Neurology by Prof. Sir Doug Turnbull (University of Newcastle upon Tyne). Both of these presentations focused on how the research presented would not have been possible without the work of highly skilled technicians.

There were also a large number of interesting workshops covering themes ranging from working at CERN to developing electric motorbikes. I attended a workshop on Plastics and Sustainability. Awareness surrounding this topic is rising partly due to TV programmes such as David Attenborough’s Blue Planet II where the environmental impact of plastics on our wildlife is shown to be devastating. Dealing with plastics and trying to reduce the amount of plastics used is highly complex. Coming from a laboratory background, I am all too aware of this as finding an alternative to plastic pipette tips is currently not possible. However, careful planning of experiments can reduce the number required.

A second workshop I attended was on the theme of the Technician Commitment. My University of Edinburgh colleagues Jon Kelly (Institute for Sport, Physical Education and Health Sciences) and Sarah McCafferty (Edinburgh CRF Genetics Core) ran this workshop and they did an excellent job of bringing further awareness to the Technician Commitment and how you can get involved or get your institute involved. They also talked about how to develop your career as a technician and how to obtain professional registration. The number of attendees I talked to who were motivated to look more closely at their career development showed the value of this workshop.

My colleagues Lee Murphy (Edinburgh CRF Genetics Core) and Natalie Homer (Edinburgh CRF Mass Spectrometry Core) presented a poster on the theme of Working Models of Core Facilities in the Edinburgh Medical School. This poster nicely described the different models of three different Core Facilities in the University of Edinburgh Medical School using the Edinburgh CRF Genetics Core, Flow Cytometry (managed by Shonna Johnston), and Edinburgh CRF Mass Spectrometry Core as examples. The poster then related the different models back to the Technician Commitment and the common requirements between them such as highly trained staff, visibility, recognition, and a well thought-out business plan.

IST Conference 2018 was very valuable experience and it was nice to see that there is a movement across Universities to give the skills of technicians more recognition – whether this is by committing to securing their posts or by encouraging their career development.

See you at the IST Conference 2019 in Birmingham!

You can view the full list of workshops here: ist-conference-2018-flyer-keynotes-workshops.

Scott Denham is the Deputy Laboratory Manager in the Mass Spectrometry Core within the Edinburgh Clinical Research Facility.