The PostDocs Forum

Brian Krueger, creator of LabSpaces, is our Featured Scientist of the Month. Follow Brian and LabSpaces bloggers on twitter. Also make sure to check out LabSpaces monthly contest. Find out how you can win an iPad from LabSpaces and BioKM.

How did you first become interested in the science field?
When I was starting 7th grade I got a subscription to Discover Magazine.  I can’t remember if it was for my birthday, or just because there was a deal in one of those magazine circulars, but I know that once I started reading the magazine I couldn’t wait for the next one to come in the mail. I know now that most of the science discussed in Discover and other science magazines like it are really glam science or science full of hyperbole and little substance, but the articles in Discover certainly piqued my interest.  Before I started high school, I thought I wanted to be an engineer or an architect, but I took a CAD class my Freshman year and was totally underwhelmed by it.  It probably didn’t help that the instructor was taking night classes to learn the material the day before he taught it to us. Throughout junior high I had been interested in web design and programming, so when the CAD thing fell through, I thought I’d try my hand at a computer programming class.  Again, I was totally bored by the subject because it wasn’t taught from a practical application perspective, but it was all theory.  Maybe I gave up on these two subjects too soon, but I eventually decided to study Biology in college and it stuck ever since.  I love being able to learn new techniques to answer exciting biological questions.

Can you tell me a little bit about your current research?
Currently I am a post-doc, but that’s not really a fair title.  I head up a core facility here at the University of Florida.  My boss received a grant to create a core facility with the sole purpose of creating herpes virus mutants so that we can better understand how the virus works.  I spend most of my day doing microbiology work in a Bacmid system that contains our virus of interest and we create deletion, insertion, or point mutants in specific places in the virus.  We have a couple of on going projects to look at how promoter mutations or mutations in specific viral DNA binding proteins affect viral latency.

You created LabSpaces.net, a popular social network for the scientific community, in 2005. How did you come up with this idea and what is your vision?
When I was in high school, I made it a point to use my Christmas breaks to learn new things.  It was usually the only time of the year that I actually got to learn something that I thought was fun.  Almost always this involved some form of programming or a new piece of software.  I continued this practice all of the way until the end of college.  2005 saw the true birth of social networking with the growth and acceptance of FaceBook as a place where people could meet friends and waste time on the internet.  I thought it might be cool to create a social network that was somewhat productive and allowed researchers to interact and discuss the latest scientific trends.  The only problem is that I had no idea how to do this!  So I picked up a book on PHP and a book on MySQL and went to town coding the basic framework of LabSpaces over the Christmas of 2005.  It took significantly more effort over the next year and a half but I finally launched the site in 2006 to little fanfare.  I have slowly built up a respectable following through FaceBook and Twitter, but the site really took off this last summer when I started to actively recruit a great group of bloggers to the site to talk about science and the latest work in their field!

How do you make time to juggle your work as a scientist and running Lab Spaces?
I work on LabSpaces during incubations if I have nothing to read or work on.  Most of the news links and press releases are selected at night or in the early morning before I head in to work.  I make website updates on the weekend when I have more time.  It’s really a bit juggling act, but I manage!

In your opinion, what is the most important quality for a scientist to be successful?
Scientists need a lot of qualities to be successful.  We’re really special people!  We need to know how to take abuse from our mentors and colleagues, we need to be determined so that we don’t crack under pressure or give up when something fails for the 4th time, and we need to be objective so that we don’t let our personal biases affect our interpretations.

Can you share any tips for lab management and organization?
During graduate school I started keeping a word/excel based electronic notebook to cut down on paper waste in the lab.  Whenever I’d do an experiment, I’d have my master protocol out on the bench and then I’d take specific notes for each experiment on a legal pad and then update my protocols electronically by date on my computer.  I really liked doing things this way.  Someone at BioKM keeps promising me a free account**, but I have yet to use any form of Laboratory Information Management Software.  I think moving my lab organization skills into the 21st century might be beneficial! (**Editor’s Note: Someone lived up to his promise and opened a free BioKM account for Brian.)

What is your next step? Where do you plan to be in ten years?
My next step is to find an industry job, somewhat similar to what I do now as a post-doc.  Like I said, its not a true academic post-doc here.  I run and manage a lab.  I do a lot of troubleshooting in addition to managerial work.  I think I’d like to find a director position somewhere where I can continue to perform similar tasks.  I’m sad to say it, but I’ve really grown tired of doing day to day bench work.