Summer Researchers Offer Emerald Cloud Lab Optimization Ideas

As the oldest child in her family, Janiece Jackson helped cook meals. "I had to think of ways to increase efficiency, especially in the kitchen," said the recent graduate from Clemson University with a major in applied and computational math. "I was always thinking of ways to make sure food was done on time when tasked with making meals for my family." In college, she used that skill not only to improve her own time management but also to provide Carnegie Mellon University alumni-founded Emerald Cloud Lab (ECL) with ideas to enhance efficiency in its facilities. Biological Sciences alumni Brian Frezza and D.J. Kleinbaum founded and lead ECL, which is based in South San Francisco. Life sciences and chemistry researchers from around the world program experiments that are run in ECL's state-of-the-art highly automated laboratory, which has more than 200 different types of instruments controlled by a single software interface. The lab can handle all aspects of daily lab work, from experiment design to data acquisition and analysis; and a combination of instrumentation and trained staff perform the experiments as prescribed by the researchers. Data is then sent to cloud-based servers for scientists to access and analyze.