Annual Artel Pipetting Challenge Another Big Hit at Pittcon

WESTBROOK, ME (March 29, 2017) – Artel, in its continuing mission to make critical laboratory skills enjoyable to learn and to practice, held its annual Pipetting Challenge at Pittcon 2017, attracting a wide range of participants ranging from veteran lab technologists, to less experienced biology and chemistry students. The Artel Pipetting Challenge brings the excitement of competition to the lab as participants learn about best practices in pipetting techniques. Developed by Artel to stress the importance of lab quality, the Pipetting Challenge allows experienced operators to demonstrate their expertise in front of their peers alongside students looking to hone the skills they will need for lab positions in the future. There were two separate competitions, student and overall, with winners receiving prizes for lowest coefficient of variation (CV).

“This year’s competition was a great success for us and for the contestants,” says Bernadette Danis, marketing manager. “In addition to watching the veteran technologists show their stuff, we love to see students attending industry events like Pittcon and taking part in the Pipetting Challenge, demonstrating how seriously they take technical skills and lab quality.”

Winning the student competition with the lowest student score of 0.07% CV, Yana Skrypal took home an Amazon Echo Dot. Jean Chang from clinical diagnostics company Ohmx was the winner of the overall competition with the lowest overall score of 0.07% CV and received an Amazon Tap.

In addition, the organizers of Pittcon ran their annual Lab Gauntlet, challenging 300 conference attendees to test their lab skills in a variety of fun but difficult lab activities, including pipetting. Broken into two sections, “Lab Ninja” and “Lab X-treme”, prizes were awarded daily for the best scores and all participants received a t-shirt.