Cells are our absolute passion. In our opinion, cells are the most wondrous creatures in this world, and the cell culture lab is our haven. The cell culture lab is also the main and most important laboratory for most life science disciplines.
Our mission is to help you develop the two essential pillars of good scientific work in the cell culture lab.
1 Reproducibility of results
No matter how groundbreaking the results of our studies are – if they cannot be reproduced, they are of no use. They would have only wasted energy, time, resources, and often times, tax money.
Unfortunately, this is a serious problem. Currently, a huge number of results in biological studies cannot be reproduced – not only by other groups, but sometimes also not by the original team. Some even talk about a “reproducibility crisis” in science.
What are the reasons for this?
One of them is sheerly the lack of efforts for standardizing methods.
2 Standardization of methods
In simple words, standardization means to maintain the same conditions for an experiment. This includes temperatures, incubation times, concentrations of solutions, surface structures, calibration of instruments – literally anything that contributes to a condition.
In the industrial sector, the practice of standardization is much better, however, in research, it needs major improvement.
Why our videos tutorials?
Our video tutorials on technical skills in the cell culture lab are a comprehensive collection of high quality videos.
After completing this course, you will…
What makes us different?
Complete package. With our video tutorials, there is no need to look around anymore. We offer the complete package for making you fit for the cell culture lab.
In our video tutorials, we not only follow the rules of GCCP (Good Cell Culture Practice), but we also want to inspire you to think about the way you work in your lab.
Learning Toolboxes (PDFs for download) are also included in the package. They will help you to become confident with your skills and knowledge.
After successfully passing the exam, you will also receive a certificate.
Community. With your help, we want to build up a global scientific community for lab culture and scientific integrity.
Scientific integrity. Our video tutorials have a special focus on scientific integrity. This includes the understanding of the importance of reproducibility of experiments and standardization of methods. We also discuss common pitfalls in data interpretation.
Social impact. We try to keep our prices as low as possible, in order to create a globally inclusive scientific community.
Our video tutorials include
- common mistakes
- do‘s and don‘ts
- tips & hacks
- good habits
- opinions
Who will benefit from our video tutorials?
Anyone who does practical work in life science labs, particularly in the cell culture lab, will find the tutorials useful. If you are an absolute beginner or you already have experience for many years in the cell culture lab, in both cases, there may be questions never answered, or, maybe never even asked. But, in our opinion, it is never too late to ask.
We offer one, two or three month streaming of our videos. Depending on your schedule, our programme will make you familiar with good working practices in the cell culture lab.
As always, if things are done differently in your lab, there may be a good reason for that. We want to encourage you to ask for the reasons. Let us foster a culture of respectful discussions – as this is what science is all about.
We listed groups of persons who would benefit from our video tutorials. However, some of you will find yourself belonging to different overlapping groups, or you may not belong to any of the groups. In any case, if you are interested in the course, you are of course always welcome to join.
Anyone who does practical work in life science labs, particularly in the cell culture lab, will find the tutorials useful. If you are an absolute beginner or you already have experience for many years in the cell culture lab, in both cases, there may be questions never answered, or, maybe never even asked. But, in our opinion, it is never too late to ask.
We offer one, two or three month streaming of our videos. Depending on your schedule, our programme will make you familiar with good working practices in the cell culture lab.
As always, if things are done differently in your lab, there may be a good reason for that. We want to encourage you to ask for the reasons. Let us foster a culture of respectful discussions – as this is what science is all about.
We listed groups of persons who would benefit from our video tutorials. However, some of you will find yourself belonging to different overlapping groups, or you may not belong to any of the groups. In any case, if you are interested in the course, you are of course always welcome to join.
As a student, you have a wonderful time ahead of you – whether you are in a bachelor, master, or even a PhD programme. The tradition of being a student goes back to almost 4000 years to the classrooms of Mesopotamia. The way you keep up this tradition makes a difference. However, life as a student can also be difficult. Students of life science, for example, often face the difficulty of limited time with their supervisors. Often, their questions regarding lab practices remain unanswered and seemingly smaller issues regarding good practices may fall short.
We want you to get the best out of your time of being a student, and hope that our video tutorials will answer many of your questions. We also want you to become great scientists with firm knowledge of technical skills in life science.
Celebrate the years to come! There is so much to learn and so much to explore in the world!
The scientific world could not do without you. Your quality of work is one of the main pillars. Therefore, it is very important to support you wherever possible. You may have changed your field of work recently, or thought it was too late to ask questions, or you simply want to extend your knowledge because this is the natural thing for you to do. In any case, our video tutorials will be of help, especially if you are the person who wants to do things the best way possible.
Our video tutorials are meant to support your important work, and to reduce your work load. They are NOT meant to substitute you. Students have more questions than you can cover in your short time for supervision. We address exactly these questions in our video tutorials. The video tutorials can be used for the preparation phase prior to a practical course in the cell culture lab. If you do things differently in the cell culture lab, we encourage you to discuss it with your students. Many things are done differently now than they were done even some years ago. Cell culture technique is a relatively new field (compared to, for example, chemistry or physics labs), and it is natural that there is not always consensus on its best practice. Essentially, we are interested in developing the best practices in a collaborative way.
Cell culture is the basic laboratory for most life science students. As cell culture technique is a relatively new discipline, there is a lot of work ahead in standardizing its best practices.
We believe that our cell culture video tutorials will help us with that task. We want to help you train students so that they are known worldwide for their high standards, the ease and precision of how they perform their experiments, and their overall scientific integrity.
Training new staff members with basic cell culture training can be extremely time-consuming, especially – if it is taken seriously. If you are responsible for building up a functional and efficient team, you probably always look for members with solid knowledge and reliable skills.
Our video tutorials can save you precious time for training newcomers to your organization, and also help you to standardize your methods in the cell culture lab. Sharing a common language can help to prevent many misunderstandings and dead-ends. With our videos we also want to encourage a culture of transparency regarding best techniques, and at the same time we want to increase the efficacy and efficiency of your team.
Do you suddenly find yourself in a completely different field than that you were trained for? Maybe you are a medical doctor doing research, or a biologist from a field, where cell culture is maybe not so common? Are you thrown into a laboratory, where everyone seems to know exactly what they are doing, and you feel intimidated to ask seemingly basic questions? Or maybe, there is simply no one to ask? Or even worse, the advice you get doesn’t seem right?
We hope to help you in such situations. If you are the person, who wants to do it correctly from the beginning, our video tutorials and the additional learning tools (PDF for download) are all for you.
Team
Before diving into the adventure of exploring the scientific world as Post-Docs, we both worked as lab technicians for many years. As a team, we cover a wide range of different laboratory techniques such as cell culture technique, molecular biology, histology, microbiology, immunology, hematology, biochemical analysis, confocal microscopy, electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy, high resolution respirometry, and many more. We have trained and supervised many bachelor, master, and PhD students over the last 25 years in practical laboratory as well as scientific work and writing. We found that especially for practical lab work, the questions and the pain points are very often the same. This inspired us to develop our video tutorials for the cell culture lab for you.
We want to pass on to you the knowledge we have accumulated over the past three decades.
We would like to share our passion for life science with you, and make your experience in the cell culture lab pleasant and exciting.
Asmita Banerjee, PhD
Adelheid Weidinger, PhD
Good Cell Culture Practice
Good Practices have been set up, because the conditions of experiments have to be technically as similar as possible. This means there are good and bad ways of performing certain tasks. In our videos, we adhere to the rules of Good Cell Culture Practice. We also believe that they need to be improved and fine-tuned even more.