Getting Started

a clear, comprehensive guide to lab life

Author: Laura DeFrancesco Date: February 15, 1999

Excerpt from At The Bench

Book cover illustration from At The Bench

Being a newcomer to a laboratory can be a daunting and, at times, frustrating experience. And while it is the rare grad student who hasn't gotten her hands wet in a laboratory, entering into the profession as a grad student or research technician is different--the stakes, the expectations, the demands are all raised a notch. What Kathy Barker has done with her newly released manual At the Bench (New York, Cold Spring Laboratory Press, 1998) is provide a ready source of information for everything from organizing lab space to designing controlled experiments to ease the rite of passage from student to professional.

While an assistant professor at Rockefeller University, Dr. Barker started putting this book together drawing on her own considerable lab experience, which...