Dr. Garber was born in Rock Island, Illinois. The founder, President and CEO of Structure Probe, Inc., he earned his undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Illinois in 1963, a Master of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from Case Institute of Technology in 1965 and a Ph.D. in Engineering (Area of Interest, Polymer Solid State Physics and Materials Science) from Case in 1967. Dr. Garber was world renowned for his work in electron microscopy and polymer physics.

He died at the age 66 after battling a brief illness due to pancreatitis.

He is laid to rest in Rock Island, Illinois. He will always be remembered by his accomplishments, and the people he touched with his smile, humor, and charming ways.

PITTCON maybe be becoming more of a “microscopy” meeting. Of the four main special “symposia” of this years PITTCON, two had the following titles: a) Nanoscale Self-Assembled Systems and b) Nanobiotechnology: From the Single Cell to the Single Molecule, suggesting that nanotechnology is becoming an important part of PITTCON programming and PITTCON sessions. This point was also consistent with the demographics of those visiting the SPI Supplies exhibit booth.

One visitor who was from the local Chicago area, and who was attending his first PITTCON, and who considered himself a “life science person”, asked me an intriguing question: Where can I go to take a short course in “Materials Science for the Life Scientist”. It seemed to me like he was inspired by the work presented in the Plenary Lecture which was the topic of my last posting. I did not have any suggestions for him. If there are such courses available, please make it known.

Also I am equally sure there must be a demand for “Life Science for the Materials Scientist” for similar reasons.

Other observations: PITTCON exhibitions of five or six years ago had large exhibit booths from “electronic” website firms like SciQuest.com and Chemdex.com, just to name two. This year’s PITTCON did not seem to have hardly any such firms, perhaps because as most have found out, it is easier and more rewarding to turn to Google and find what you need that way. And with a Google search, one gets an unfiltered kind of report, not just one that shows firms agreeing to pay (to be on the list).

Trade journal booths seem to be getting smaller and this seems to be because, well, lets face it, we are all reading less and less of what comes in the mail and more and more electronically via what comes over our computer screens. Smaller readerships mean smaller numbers of paid advertisers. Indeed to the extent I had time to meet with other exhibitors, including publishers, it seems that those in the publishing business are trying hard to figure out how to change their business models so that they can make money off their internet websites (and to make up for lost advertising revenues from their print publications). My own sense is that there is great frustration in many of the large publishing houses as they try to transition from a purely print operation to one that also has an electronic component. It turns out that many publishing firms are finding it hard to get their new internet audiences to pay for what up until now has been available for free.

MicroChuck

The PITTCON 2007 is now history. The organizers were not publicizing the attendance figures as they usually have done, hence I have concluded, based on that and also, traffic in the exhibition to mean attendance was “down” from last year. Certainly there seemed to be more than the normal number of “empty” booths, suggesting last minute cancellations.

But on Sunday, I had the opportunity to attend the Opening Session which included a Plenary Lecture by Dr. Charles M. Lieber, The Mark Hyman Jr. Professor of Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and Professor in the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University. The title of his talk was “Nanowire Nanoelectronic Devices for Detection of and Interfacing to Biological Systems”.

Now this is superb research and anyone having a chance to hear Prof. Lieber will not quickly forget his presentation and what they learn.

But there is something else that came across to me: Prof. Lieber and his group are working at the forefront of research on nanowires and nanotubes, and their work involves intimate knowledge of biological interactions at the nanoscale, and in addition, work at the cutting edge of biological research and chemical sensing. Naturally, SEM
and TEM were critically needed tools to study and characterize the structures they were fabricating. And it looked like they were using some MEMS methodologies to produce some of their sensor structures. But what struck me as being the most amazing is how so many of the traditional barriers that define materials science, biological science, chemistry, physics, and perhaps are few other disciplines have so quickly disappeared. The point is, I don’t know how one would classify the work being done by Prof. Lieber and his group in traditional terms.

This also suggests that those scientists having the greatest potential for profound discoveries in the future will be those who know as much about materials science as they do about life science and vice versa. Perhaps the way of the future will not be along the lines of classical chemistry, physics, biology, etc. departments but structured more along the lines of multidisciplinary departments. If I am right about this, then this surely does suggest that any life science researcher, to stay ahead of their peers, will need to become an expert in materials science and vice versa.

I can’t help but think about the time of my own graduate days when I viewed myself as being in materials science and computer science was like another world. In those days and in my world, there were materials science people and there were computer science people. Had I been able to predict the merging of these fields, that one day one could not do cutting edge materials science and without having a good computer science background, perhaps some of my earlier choices in course electives might have been different.

I think the merging of disciplines is already happening at breakneck speed, and those wanting to stay at the forefront of their respective fields will have to learn the other technologies they don’t already know.

MicroChuck

Next week is  PITTCON 2007 in Chicago, the largest trade show in the world featuring analytical instrumentation.  And it is this time of the year, when I am getting ready for this year’s PITTCON that I am reminded of an experience of many years ago, March 1967 to be exact that had a major impact on me and my future career choices.

It was a wintry day in March in Cleveland, and my thesis advisor, Prof. Philip H. Geil, literally crammed into his (at that time already) old red French Renault himself and four of his most senior graduate students, and we made the three hour drive (that seemed like six hours) from Cleveland to Pittsburgh.  These were the days when the PITTCON was still called the Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and it was indeed still being held in Pittsburgh.  This was also the time that the exhibition was held in the ball room of the long time landmark William Penn hotel.  There were fewer than 200 exhibiting companies.  Very small on today’s standards for sure as there are now over 1000 exhibiting companies and from all over the world.

As a graduate student I can recall my amazement at seeing for the first time the “business” side of the conduct of research.  Until that time, I had never really had reason to give any thought about how it came to be that all the marvelous research equipment and instrumentation ended up in our laboratory at what was then Case Institute of Technology but today is part of Case WRU. Prof. Geil was a real role model for us because he first of all took us around the exhibition.  We stopped at all the exhibit booths of those firms from which supplies and equipment had been purchased previously.  I can recall vividly the time we spent at the Rigaku booth because Prof. Geil had some concerns about the short life times that were being experienced on the rotating anode source of the small angle diffraction system we used in our research.  And this is where I learned for the first time not only how important it was to have technically competent representatives in an exhibit booth but also, how much could be learned technically from such booth personnel.  For example, it was then that I learned how to operate the system differently so that longer life times could be realized.

We spent time at several of the manufacturers of transmission electron microscopes (in those days there were no SEMs) and Prof. Geil talked to all of them about what kind of function and capabilities their microscopes had for the study of beam sensitive polymer samples (a concern, ironically that exists still today).  I saw first hand and for the first time, how important that vendor/customer interface can be in terms of both developing new instrumentation needed by the market place but also, how the users of such intrumentation could use the instrumentation they had more effectively.

These lessons, learned by role model emulation, had a major impact on me.  And over the years, by visting exhibitions,  I have learned huge amounts of information that would not otherwise have been easily learned from scientific presentations or published papers,  or in later years, poster presentations.  That one experience in Pittsburgh in 1967 in a major way shaped my own future career path.

I don’t see today’s Professor Geils taking in tow their graduate students and showing them by role model behavior how much can be learned by visiting the exhibition that is a part of so many of today’s scientific meetings.  I do see an almost anti-trade show bent on the part of some of today’s students, almost like it is a second class kind of learning if one spends time in the trade show area.

PITTCON 2007 will open on Feb. 26 and run until March 1 at McCormick Place in Chicago.  It is the premier opportunity for those working with analytical instrumentation to learn about the latest developments and newest products and the newest things that can be done with them.  If you are a student, consider attending. If you are a teacher with students working under you, consider bringing some of your students to the PITTCON this year.  The three hour drive years ago that seemed like six hours was well worth the sacrifice.

I make this point this week because at the typical scientific meeting with a trade show and exhibition, only a small percentage of those attending spend any time in the exhibition at all.  I argue that there is a great deal of lost opportunity for learning from the exhibitors.  And as I pointed out, the best way to learn is by role model emulation: Students take on the habits and attitudes of their teachers and professors.  On the last day of the exhibition (March 1), the entrance fee to the exhibition is free.

If you should decide to come to the PITTCON because of this posting, stop by at the SPI Supplies booth #1903 and say “MicroChuck sent you”.  I would look forward to meeting you and hearing your comments about the MicroChuck blog……..

MicroChuck

Sorry for the long period of time that has passed since my last blog entry. I realize this is not good if I want to see traffic growth to the MicroChuck blog and I will redouble my efforts to make a new posting once a week.

I have been traveling extensively this last month, because of foreign trade shows, and the need to visit certain vendors. I am writing this from Australia where it is summer, and not from West Chester (suburban Philadelphia) where it is terribly cold.

But today was quite exciting for me and worthy of comment to others who would have similar interests. I spent the day with Dr. Vivian Robinson, the inventor of the Robinson Backscattered Electron Detector. I marvel at how as a university “lecturer” (in some countries, he would have been called a professor) he decided that in order to pursue his passion for his invention of the backscattered electron detector, he felt he should not be spending his time writing proposal after proposal in the hopes of getting funded by some government agency, but should just go on out there, have confidence in his own abilities and start a company to make the detectors commercially.

As they say, the rest was history. The Robinson Backscattered Electron Detector is a household word among the worldwide community of SEM users. But what impressed me was that Dr. Robinson did not start out with a public stock offering, and he did not seek government funding and subsidy to start his business. He just rolled up his sleeves and did it. He has spent much of his entire professional life since the late 1970’s building and improving his own design of a backscattered electron detector. It was fascinating to me to see what he has been able to design and produce literally with his own two hands and genius. His firm is known worldwide as ETP-SEMRA Ltd.

In days when graduates with technical degrees seem to be pre-destined to end up in laboratories of big academia or big business or big government, it is refreshing to see that even “down under”, in Australia, where the domestic market is really not that large, someone with good ideas, ingenuity, and belief in themselves can succeed in the competitive world of technology. It has for some time been a fascination of my own why more persons with technical backgrounds don’t take what they know, and start small enterprises as Dr. Robinson did thirty years ago. Perhaps it is time for universities to start showcasing successful technical entrepreneurs like Dr. Robinson so that their own graduates might better appreciate that there are opportunities as a small manufacturer. Perhaps some universities already recognize the career potential for at least some of their students as entrepreneurs and inventors; it would be interesting to hear how they are doing that and how they are getting some of their students interested in such non-traditional career paths.

And this is important because when the conduct of electron microscopy is no longer price competitive with other analytical methods, either microscopic or non-microscopic, less EM works gets done. And that means there are fewer people employed to do EM work.

For at least the last ten years I have heard, especially when standing in our exhibit booth at trade shows, story after story about TEM labs being closed down, mainly in the life sciences area but also in the materials sciences. I invariably hear about the “high cost of doing electron microscopy relative to other techniques”. The shut downs are always blamed on hapless “bean counting” administrators. But is it really?

I for one don’t believe it has to be that way.

In our own laboratory some years ago, when we implemented a “Total Quality Management” system, which in the 1990’s was the management “buzz” word of the decade, we were quite shocked to see how many samples had to be run over again because they were not done right the first time. The quality professionals call this the “cost of rework”. Quite frankly, I was shocked to find out how much money was being wasted because we had not done our work properly the first time. Now I do know that EM work is delicate and all kinds of things can potentially go “wrong”. But once we started keeping track of the different kinds of reasons why the samples were not done right the first time, so that we could learn from our mistakes and reduce the number of instances where such mistakes happened, we were able to reduce the cost of “rework” dramatically.

I know that from time to time there are symposia on “laboratory management” but at least those I have myself attended, they seemed to focus on bringing in money to the laboratory, either by way of increased grant writing or even soliciting work from commercial firms (I will have more to say about this later in some future blog posting).

To me, the real meaning of laboratory management is the managing of the way samples flow through the laboratory and the way human resources are allocated for handling the sample flow. And this all has to be done from the perspective of meeting or exceeding customer and/or client expectations. This means building into each step of each procedure or protocol, a stop-and-look step, to see what could possibly go wrong, and then take some action to make sure it does not happen. And the samples won’t have to be run over again.

This is not the first time I have expressed these thoughts to a TEM audience, though in the past the audience size was far smaller. Some typical responses: “You could never apply TQM in a research laboratory setting.” “It is not the same as manufacturing widgets to some standard specification.” ” I think professionals generally don’t like someone else looking over their shoulder.” But having someone review the reasons why samples had to be done over again, and why they were not done right the first time does not to me seem to be the kind of onerous situation that should get someone upset.

In order to reduce the cost of doing TEM work, we need better management in the laboratory. The skills needed for the proper management of an EM laboratory are no less important than the skills needed for the writing of proposals for funding for the laboratory.

The whole world at times seems like it is on a “quality” kick. How many times a day do we see manufacturers’ statements about “ISO 9000 registration, ” which imply that their product somehow has a higher quality because it carries this designation. I am personally unaware of anyone who has ever documented that products with such registrations are either more reliable or last longer than those that are not so registered. But marketing people from one corner of the world to the other think it is important.

This means that all microscopy laboratories in such ISO registered firms must also be accredited to the standard of ISO 17025, And this means that the laboratory must be inspected by an outside inspector to satisfy some laboratory accreditation agency. And this also means that the laboratory uses, on a regular basis, “certified” standard. The startling fact: a “certified”standard can cost up to ten or more times additional than the “traceable” version of the same thing.

So just what is the difference?

Take the case of a stage micrometer for a light microscope calibration. For years, light microscopists have purchased stage micrometers to calibrate their light microscopes. The manufacturer checks the “markings” against some other standard that has been checked against a standard measured at NIST or some other national metrology laboratory. But if one wants a “certified” standard, that means that some many different measurements are made with a microscope, in an accredited metrology laboratory, and then the many measurements are analyzed and a standard deviation calculated and reported in a “report” that accompanies the “certified” item. It is the very same item that could have been purchased without the papers for perhaps $100. But with the papers, the cost skyrockets to $1000 or more.

I just don’t believe many of the standards being purchased in “certified” form are really needed. Unfortunately I see too many customers with limited budgets paying outrageous amounts for the “papers” when the standard in its uncertified form would be more than sufficient. Putting it another way, how many times might a laboratory be better off with a variety of different standards or calibration aids but in “traceable” instead of “certified” form?

Hello Fellow Microscopist,

If you are reading this, consider yourself a part of an experiment, one of my own creation. A blog about microscopy. Or perhaps more precisely, a periodic venting of my own personal views on some aspect of microscopy, the business of microscopy, future trends and/or other factors impacting on those working in “microscopy”.

Who am I?

Some know me as Charles A. Garber and others know me as “Dr. Garber” For those who know me through postings on listservers and newsgroups, I am known as “Chuck”. For the blog, I will be known as “MicroChuck”. No snickering about that name will be tolerated….but it seemed only natural to combine “Chuck” with something suggesting “microscopy”.

Do I have any such credentials to prognosticate about future trends in microscopy? Or other aspects of microscopy? I will let the readers be the judge. I have worked my entire professional life in electron microscopy. And for the past 36+ years, I have created, grown, and nurtured my own firm, Structure Probe, Inc, which to some is better known as SPI Supplies. We now employ 35+ scientists, engineers, and others in our West Chester, PA USA headquarters. Not many companies serving the microscopy and microanalysis market can claim that many years under the same management and ownership. But I do believe this lifetime of working in the microscopy field, not just as a researcher using microscopes but also as an entrepreneur and corporate manager, does give me some unique insights into the microscopy world.

In order to attract a wide viewer base, MicroChuck will not be covering highly technical points and concepts. This is better left to the many fine scientific meetings and publications. Here we will talk about topics of interest to microscopists generally, not just life science or materials science, not just to cutting edge researchers but also to high school teachers and even students. I plan to emphasize future trends, not just from the technical but also from the management, quality, marketing, and even career perspectives. We plan to cover topics that will be of interest and understood by virtually anyone using any kind of a microscope, be it a few hundred dollars to a few hundred thousand dollars……

Why am I doing this? I guess my first off response is that I want to share what I think in some instances, represents unique perspectives on our industry and profession. I hope others might benefit from my experience and views. Oh, yes, this will, if done correctly, enhance the already excellent branding (brand reputation) of SPI Supplies and Structure Probe, Inc. There might even be some links to certain pages on the SPI Supplies website but such links would be there only if they enhanced the value of the content in that particular posting. When appropriate there could be even links to sites of other firms or in an extraordinary circumstance, even to relevant website pages of competitors. But the content covered and the thoughts expressed will be 100% my own, and under no circumstances would money or any other consideration be accepted to mention or promote any particular concept or product. This will be a completely independent undertaking and one should not be surprised if my comments at times might even seem to upset those with whom I might like to do business (through SPI Supplies).

At some point, as the traffic builds to the MicroChuck blog, we might invite a limit number of firms serving the microscopy industry to be listed on the side as a “sponsor”. This will be done tastefully and unobtrusively. Yes, for these we will accept a payment to help defray the costs of running MicroChuck. Since there will be an opportunity for any viewer to post their own comments regarding thoughts expressed by MicroChuck, more than anything else it will be our viewers who keep us true to our stated goals and objectives.

Thank you for visiting the MicroChuck blog. This is the introductory posting. I hope you will return often. I hope you will share your views with the concept of the MicroChuck blog.

MicroChuck