In this episode, we are featuring virtual training at the Inorganic Nanostructures facility. Our guests, Tracy Mattox and Anne Pham, share how the facility is enabling user science with new tools and techniques.
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 Foundry. Today we’re featuring Virtual Training at the Inorganic nanostructures facility of the Molecular Foundry. The Inorganic facility focuses on synthesis and characterization of nanocrystals, nanotubes and nanowires, including the preparation, characterization and applications of novel inorganic nanomaterials. Robotic synthesis of nanocrystals and molecular metal chalcogenides clusters are also Of particular interest. Our guests today are inorganic facility principal scientific engineering associate Tracy Mattox, and senior engineering associate Anne Pham, thanks for being here. So, the inorganic facility really took the lead on developing training videos. Tracy, can you say a little bit about your approach to using these videos?
Tracy Mattox
Well, we realized, really as soon as COVID hit us, that we would have to be pretty inventive and find new ways to train our users. Many of our instruments are actually in very tiny rooms and it’s common to bump elbows, which of course means you can’t socially distance. So Anne and i went ahead and bought a camcorder and a tripod and started filming videos. And we used a software program called Camtasia. And let me tell you, there was a little bit of a steep learning curve, but we got there, we essentially recorded all of our normal training sessions for our instruments, and added lots of arrows and text and made sure it was really clear, and tried to address the most common problems that users have when they’re being trained. We thought it was a good idea to make these as a reference too, so if someone steps away from the lab or is gone for a while and forgets a step, they can just pull up the video and they can get real time help.
Shannon Ciston
That’s really nice. Anne, can you tell us which instruments have the training videos available?
Anne Pham
Yeah, so most of the training videos we’ve made so far are for instruments on the solution phase side of the lab, so instruments like the ICP-OES, the TGA, DSC, the tabletop SEM, Fluorimeter, both UV-Vis’s, centrifuge, and FT-IR. And we have a glove box one in progress.
Shannon Ciston
Great. and how do you sort of access these videos.
Anne Pham
So the inorganic facility has its own website, and it’s called oliver.lbl.gov. And on this website, there are videos and manuals associated with each instrument, along with other validated experimental methods and other resources to support day to day work in the facility. But also, when users reach out to staff about training, we also send them the direct link to the videos. And we usually ask them to watch these videos before we do a live virtual session training at the instrument.
Shannon Ciston
Thanks,
Tracy, how’s the implementation of the training videos going so far?
Tracy Mattox
On my end, so far, it’s gone extremely well. Users have been super appreciative and given lots of positive feedback. And when we’re using the webcams, we can really tell during training, who’s watched the videos, and who hasn’t, and for the most part, it’s required now, so training sessions are just about helping users be hands on. And this all makes remote learning go a lot more smoothly.
Shannon Ciston
That’s great. Thanks. So, switching a little bit, I have heard you also have some telepresence robots. Anne, can you tell everybody what a telepresence robot is and how you’ve been making use of them during the pandemic.
Anne Pham
So a telepresence robot is essentially an iPad on wheels that I can control anywhere, as long as I have an internet connection. So is eventually like, kind of like my electronic avatar at the lab. So usually at the lab, before users can work on our floor, we have to do a user onboarding. Usually, this is uh, you know, we are physically walking into the lab, showing them where everything is, but you can’t really do that now. So this robot is in place of me. So I’ll have them study the [onboarding] packet ahead of time, and then I’ll quiz them over zoom and if they pass with flying colors, we’ll schedule time where they are the ones that come on site, but I am not on site. Instead I’ll use the robot to walk them through the lab and give them a tour, show them where the fire extinguisher is, where our satellite waste accumulation area is, and then after that, I’ll usually also train them on their requested instrument to maximize the efficiency of their shift.
Tracy Mattox
And they’re also really, really good for troubleshooting. For some instruments we can set up both a webcam and a telepresence robot to be in the room with the users to help them during training, and this lets staff see how people are handling the tasks at the instruments such as loading samples in and out, and it just makes sure we can make sure that they’re doing things safely.
Shannon Ciston
Great. Okay, that’s all the time we have for this episode. Thank you and Tracy, for telling us about the ways you’re working to enable user science with new tools and techniques. And I personally think it’s clear that some of these methods are going to have lasting value for users to return to again and again. Thanks for listening everyone. Please look for more episodes of foundry from home as we continue to highlight developments in virtual remote and distance user training and access throughout the Molecular Foundary.
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 the US Department of Energy Office of Science user facility at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
