In this episode, we are featuring remote access developments at the Biological Nanostructures Facility, one of the Foundry’s synthesis facilities that studies the synthesis, analysis and mimicry of biological nanostructures.
Transcript:
Shannon Ciston
Welcome to this episode of Foundry from Home, a podcast to highlight new developments in remote, virtual, and physically distanced user access to the Molecular Foundry. I’m Shannon Ciston, the User Program Director at the Molecular Foundry. Today, we’re featuring remote access developments at the biological nanostructures facility. Our guests today are biological nanostructures facility Director Dr. Corie Ralston and senior scientific engineering associate Dr. Behzad Rad. Thanks for being here with us. Today, Corey and Bezhad highlight some of the capabilities available by remote login for users, as well as some ways that support is provided remotely by staff for users working on site. Behzad, let’s start with remote login for some of the microscopes in the bio facility. Can you tell us which microscopes those are that users can access remotely and what that process typically looks like?
Behzad Rad
Sure, Hi, thanks for having us. We have kind of new upgrades to our microscope suite in the bio facility- we have a superresolution microscope, and we have a confocal microscope that’s also been outfitted with a new detector to give us also superresolution. But you know, in these times, when we’re at home and trying to figure out how to work from a distance, we have a nice software suite that controls both those systems where users can log in, or we can log in as staff and remotely use that software to guide the microscope, as well as take images and do some processing, which makes it makes it a lot simpler and very friendly to kind of do work at home. The microscopes are really extensible like that, but the problem is that we’re not there to switch out samples or try different things or be able to really troubleshoot on the fly. We can get a sample on the system or staff can help users to get samples on the system, and we can then give them remote access and be there virtually through different software suites, like Zoom, or TeamViewer and then have them look at their sample, move around, and then take those pictures I was talking about. This is really nice for a lot of users who can’t be in the same room together, because the microscopes are in a smaller lab and we’re trying to limit the amount of people in a room.
Shannon Ciston
Yeah, that makes sense. And are the users able to access the full range of instrument functions this way? How does it compare to when users would be sitting at the instrument there?
Behzad Rad
You know, this is different, because you usually have a joystick and all these knobs that you can turn to focus and move around your sample. And a lot of that’s now going to be done through sort of clicking the mouse and looking in, but the controls are there and the software gets you some very fine positioning and some fine resolution. But you know, the core functions of getting your sample really focused or finding a whole new region to image does require being there in person. But troubleshooting has been streamlined with this tech and the software, because you can actually remote in as staff and help people on as they’re on the microscope without being physically in the room. And I’ve done that a couple times. And for both systems, we did training and had multiple people remote in at the same time as well for new trainings, to learn new techniques, and to learn how to do certain imaging modes on those two microscopes.
Shannon Ciston
Nice. Okay, thanks Behzad. And Corie, I understand users can also remotely log in to do data analysis. Can you tell us which types of analysis that includes and how that works?
Corie Ralston
Yeah, so we have remote data processing available for some of our workflows. And this was something that we started actually right before the pandemic started. And the workflows that this is for is mass spectrometry and liquid chromatography. So we have two workstations setup, one is specifically for analyzing X-ray footprinting data that uses a software called Proteinmetrics. And then we have another server setup to analyze data from the traditional peptoid workflow. For the peptoid workflow, we actually have a very nice instrument. It’s a it’s a walkup instrument, so users can put their samples on the instrument and data gets analyzed automatically. But a fair amount of the time, people want to go back in and re-analyze their data. So now we have this server setup so they can log in remotely and re-analyze the data without having to come back onsite. Both the servers are set up so only one person can log in at a time, so we now have an instrument calendar and people can reserve time to log in and do their data processing. And another thing that we’re doing is we’re working with the Berkeley Lab data management centers so that we can much more easily backup all our data and we can also move data from servers to servers, to really help enable this remote acquisition and processing.
Shannon Ciston
That’s great. So we’ve talked a little bit about how users can access capabilities onsite while they’re remote, but another important approach for managing density in the lab is letting the user be present in this space, but providing staff support from a distance. Corie, you mentioned you have a new merged reality tool that you’ve been testing. Can you tell us about that?
Corie Ralston
Yeah, so this tool is called Help Lightning, and we’re using a demo version to check out how well it works for us. It’s merged reality, like you said. So what that means is that basically, the user and staff person can have their videos merged. So for instance, if a user is standing in front of an instrument such as a spectrometer, they can hold up an iPad or an iPhone, and then they have the view be of the instrument, and the staff person who’s at home has that same view, but they can actually put their hand into the image that the user is seeing, so that they can point to knobs, they can point to displays. And it turns out this is, this is really handy when you’re trying to explain for instance, “no, put the sample there. No, okay turn it 90 degrees. Okay, now, turn that knob over there. Now, close the lid here and go look at that display over there.” And you could point to it inside their their video feed. So this has been very, very useful. Like I said, we just have a demo version at the moment. So we’re hoping that Berkeley Lab will decide to purchase this software so we can start using it more more extensively.
Shannon Ciston
Cool. And Behzad are there other ways that staff are communicating with users from a distance to provide support?
Behzad Rad
Yeah, so we’re using a lot of different communication tools to accommodate people’s phones, for instance, or the technology they have and the technology we have. So we’ve been using communication software like slack to organize some of our users or to have projects. And those are kind of nice, also, because they have these almost instant messaging tools where people can ask a question really quickly, via a message or direct message, about the location of a chemical, some sort of troubleshooting thing about an instrument. And that’s been very helpful. I think email kind of gets clogged a lot of times and people have a lot to answer. But sometimes you need a direct question and answer. Since we can’t be onsite, a lot of these tools help get users going, by [helping] to locate something they’re looking for. And you know, us and all the other facilities in the Molecular Foundry, we bought a telepresence robot, it’s essentially a tablet on wheels. And this robot can get remote logged in by any one of the staff and can be guided through their computer to roll into any lab or up and down the hall. And it gives us the experience of being next to a user without physically being there and helping. It’s a has that tablet, like I mentioned, but it also has a fisheye camera also mounted on the on the robot that can let us really see a wide view that’s around the robot. And that really helpful when you’re just trying to guide somebody from this position to that position, or look for a knob or look for something that’s on a shelf that you can’t just look at through a camera on a phone. And so we’ve been using that a couple times even between staff members just to locate something or to do something that’s kind of a high priority.
Shannon Ciston
All right, thanks. And Corie, just to wrap it up here, is there anything else you’d like to emphasize about how the bio facility is supporting users during the pandemic?
Corie Ralston
Well, one thing we’re doing is we’re trying to do a little more of the sample-only types of proposals. So we always supported sample-only proposals, but now, we’re encouraging more users to send in those types of requests. And we’re stretching the definition of that just a little bit. So previously, a sample only meant you put in a request for something that we have in our freezer that we can just send. Now if it’s something we can make pretty easily and we’ve already developed the protocol for making it, then we’d be willing to make the sample for the users. And another thing we’re trying to do is share our expertise in protocols. So if a user comes to the foundry, and we help them figure out some method, say of synthesizing a molecule, we help them then bring that back to their home lab. So then they can do everything else from there on in their lab.
Shannon Ciston
All right, that’s all we have time for in this episode. Thanks so much Corie and Behzad for sharing with us about these innovations at the biological nanostructures facility. And on behalf of our user community, thanks for all the work you’re doing to innovate and keep that access going. Thanks for listening everyone. Please look for more episodes of Foundry from Home as we continue to highlight developments in virtual, remote, and distanced user training and access throughout the Molecular Foundry.
This has been a production of the Molecular Foundry’s User Program Office and Communications team.
The music used in this production was “Still room on the night train” by Ketsa, courtesy of the Free Music Archive. The Molecular Foundry is a US Department of Energy Office of Science user facility at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
