The Survey Committee's report on compensation and employment profiles in biotechnology facilities is currently going through the submission process. For the survey ABRF members responded to a questionnaire on salary, compensation, education, experience, specialization, employment history, and career opportunities. Fifty-four per cent (136/252) of laboratory directors provided data; 187 additional facility staff responded. Of 136 responses, 74% were from non-profit institutions (universities, research institutes, government laboratories) and 26% were from private commercial organizations. Seventy-six per cent of facility directors held Ph.D. degrees, and 59% of staff held bachelors degrees. Directors had 13 years of experience on average and 44% held tenure track appointments, while the average staff member had 7 years of experience. The complete report should be available soon.
At the Tenth ABRF Annual Meeting in Boston, the Survey Committee presented our upcoming instrument survey on a poster. The survey committee's goal is to query current users for their level of satisfaction with available instruments. Impartial statistics on user satisfaction with performance, technical support, service, and reagents should prove valuable to potential purchasers. This will also provide valuable information to manufacturers about what users consider important. To complete the survey, member laboratories will choose from a list of coded instruments and then rate the instruments using a number from one to five, with five being their best rating and one being their worst rating. At this point the instrument list contains six carbohydrate analysis instruments, thirteen capillary electrophoresis instruments, seventeen peptide synthesizers, eleven protein sequencers, ten amino acid analyzers, thirty-six mass spectrometers, twenty-four DNA synthesizers, and thirteen DNA sequencers. You should receive this survey in your mail soon.
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