I would like to thank Charlie Fry for organizing such a full, well attended
meeting of the AMMRL at the ENC.
Here is a summary of the points made during the discussion group for user
competence in the environment of modern instruments and automation.
Although I do not agree with all of the points made, I found the discussion very
informative and stimulating.
Thank you to all of you who contributed and hung around until the end.
-Glenn
It was felt that our community should embrace automation.
User training should be tailored to the user. Users running simple
measurements need very little training and can use automation to their
advantage. Users with more demanding needs should be provided with as much
training as they need from the facility manager to allow them to solve their
particular problems with NMR. In this way we can concentrate our efforts on
those who will benefit from them the most. Users who run complicated
experiments need not be bothered with running many routine experiments
manually.
Although users may not be as competent as they once were at the experimental
aspect of NMR, they remain competent at handling data.
Experimental competence is becoming less important than data interpretation
and the choice of pulse sequence for the problem at hand.
Complete automation has the same role in a university as it has in industry - it
improves the efficiency and throughput of NMR spectrometers. It is most
advantageous to those who run many routine experiments. These users should
not be bogged down by such things as pulse calibration or magnet shimming.
Although automation has led to an overall decrease in user competence, it has
led to more exposure of different NMR sequences to the user and as such may
allow some users to learn more about NMR then they would have otherwise.
Automation has led to more people being exposed to NMR spectroscopy.
Automation will certainly guarantee the future employment of NMR facility
managers as NMR spectroscopy becomes more and more important, there are
fewer people who understand how the data are acquired and how the
instruments work.
Dr. Glenn A. Facey
NMR Facility Manager
University of Ottawa
10 Marie Curie, K1N 6N5
ph. (613) 562-5800 xt 6077
fax. (613) 562-5170
gafacey_at_science.uottawa.ca
www.science.uottawa.ca/nmr
Received on Wed May 03 2006 - 18:14:36 MST