Greetings all,
It looks like we'll have a lot to talk about at ENC w/ regard to
appropriate levels of user training.
Running a biomolecular facility, I have been identifying people from
all walks of scientific life who'd benefit from doing NMR, and
encouraging them to perform experiments with us. Frequently, these
people are graduate students and senior scientists in molecular
genetics, molecular biology, physiology, etc., and they have little
training or interest in physics or spectroscopy. Yet they'd obtain
powerful knowledge about their systems if they knew just enough to
perform a series of HSQCs and not misinterpret what they saw.
I've been endeavoring to streamline training for these researchers so
they can benefit from our wonderful technique. It becomes immediately
obvious to them when sitting at the spectrometer and later analyzing
their data that they can't treat the instruments or software like black
boxes. Yet complete knowledge (e.g., knowing boolian logic and
semiconductor chemical physics to operate a computer) is clearly
unnecessary. To help the nonspectroscopists benefit from NMR with a
minimal amount of training, I've been writing user guides for various
experiments (10 things to do w/ an HSQC, diffusion measurement, how to
go from raw data to spectra in postscript format with NMRDraw and
NMRView, etc.) that I've been loosely terming, "Gray Boxes." My aim
with these has been to give them just the information they need to
acquire and interpret their data nd encourage them to ask me about more
details should they want to learn more.
In an egregiously shameless example of self-promotion, I'd like to
point out that I'll be presenting a poster on this subject at ENC
Thursday April 27 (poster #410, "Gray Boxes for Biochemical NMR").
Maybe we'll be able to nucleate there and elaborate on the discussions
begun Monday evening.
You can read the poster abstract on the ENC website here:
http://www.enc-conference.org/DisplayAbstractList3.aspx?
Conf=ENC2006&Session=PB
The contents of the poster will be placed on our facility website after
the meeting.
See you soon!
- Josh
Josh Kurutz, Ph.D.
Technical Director, Biomolecular NMR Facility
University of Chicago
Center for Integrative Science, room W123B
929 E. 57th St.
Chicago, IL 60637
Office: (773) 834-9805
Spectrometer room: (773) 702-4052
Cell (773) 315-5732
Fax: (208) 978-2599
nmr.bsd.uchicago.edu
Received on Thu Apr 13 2006 - 11:32:21 MST