Project Description

3D Bioprinting Group

By Yanik Deana, Ph.D. student – School of Life Sciences FHNW, Institute for Ecopreneurship (IEC)


Can you tell us a bit more about your work and what do you find most interesting about it?

I recently started my PhD position at the IEC working in the 3D bio-printing group. So we are using a high-tech 3D printer to print biological substances in order to investigate living samples, mostly their survival and most important their function. For me the combination of several scientific fields such as chemistry, biology and some technical features in an environmental usage is the most exciting part.

How did you decide to start using an electronic lab notebook?

During my master thesis project abroad in the USA the lab only used paperless documentation and conversation by an electronic lab notebook. Our group is quite distributed and globally connected.

Using an electronic lab notebook could be an ideal solution to always keep the peers up to date, without even seeing each other every day face to face.

Therefore, we decided to use such kind of data storage and task manager for our lab.

Which were the main reasons that you chose SciNote?

There are several electronic notebook software available on the market.

We have chosen this tool first a bit by accident and second because the first touch was convincing. Additionally, with the free usage plan we are able to test this system already having enough storage and good conditions at the beginning.

As we only have one team running for this specific project and the set up was achieved straightforward, we decided to get SciNote a chance to support our lab communication.

How much time did it take you to get familiar with SciNote in the beginning and start using it?

To be honest we are still in the beginning phase of getting familiar with SciNote. Nevertheless, it is quite straightforward and you can easily figure out what to do by just doing it.

For example to upload data or protocols you just got a drag & drop window, where anyone of the team can upload their documents in a very well organized manner. I guess it is easy to use if you have already used to cloud storage. The Workflows and tasks need for sure more hands-on experiences to learn properly.

How does SciNote fit into your workdays and where is it most helpful?

So far we mostly store our protocols on SciNote. There it is useful, so anyone has always access to the newest version of any document uploaded.

In future for me, mostly the workflow and task manager would be very helpful. First I can define and design my experiment and second my supervisor may give comments and improvements on this, directly using SciNote.

Which are the benefits of using SciNote i.e. what do you like most about it?

As already mention above, designing the experiments and even setting due dates including the direct communication via this platform can be very useful if the whole team is collaborating.

What is your experience with the SciNote team?

I did not have any conversation with the SciNote team itself, beside Masa Petan for this document.

Would you recommend SciNote to other scientists and why?

For what I have already heard and experienced on my own so far, yes!