Technicians Under the Microscope with Kim Nguyen-Phuoc
WolfLabs is putting technicians under the microscope!
This time, we’re featuring Kim Nguyen-Phuoc, Scientific Officer at the NU-OMICS DNA Sequencing Research Facility at Northumbria University.
Read on to discover Kim’s career journey, biggest challenges, and advice for aspiring technicians.
Can you tell us about your current role?
I work as a Scientific Officer at the NU-OMICS DNA Sequencing Research Facility at Northumbria University. We are a service that helps researchers integrate -omics into their projects whether they are entry level or more experienced in the field. I help support research projects from proof-of-concept to completion and our team aims to add value at any stage. My main role starts when samples arrive at our facility. Members of our team take on projects as they arrive, which means that on a day-to-day basis, I can be found extracting DNA or RNA, preparing libraries, loading our sequencing machines, or shipping data back to our clients.
What inspired you to become a technician?
I wanted to become a technician because I love helping people with their science, enjoy doing technical work in the lab, and in this particular role I get to be involved in a lot of diverse research. I am also lucky in that in my current role, our repertoire of techniques is ever expanding as the field of -omics continues to develop and so on the day-to-day what I do doesn't stagnate either.
What has been your biggest challenge so far?
Big projects are always a challenge, not necessarily because they are difficult in themselves but because of how other smaller projects will accumulate while you're working on something for two weeks. Creating a management system for all of the projects has improved this problem quite a lot, as another technician can more easily pick up where I have left off, and breaks can be taken during the processing of the larger projects to push some of the smaller projects through. Everyone in the lab also hates when one of our machines does something funny and we need to spend the day figuring out why.
What are your plans over the next five years?
I hope to continue in the role of Scientific Officer as the facility that I work at continues to develop and grow. Through this role, I expect to continue expanding my knowledge and developing my skills in the field as new techniques and technologies are developed. One thing that I definitely want to improve upon in the next five years is my bioinformatic skills so that I can be more involved in the processing of the data that we produce in the lab.
What does a typical day look like for you?
Researchers most commonly submit extracted DNA to our facility and I usually take on the long-read sequencing projects. Therefore, most of my days are spent doing PacBio library preps to load onto our PacBio Revio sequencer. We also do short-read and amplicon sequencing and most recently our facility has started to do single-cell sequencing using Parse's sequencer agnostic kits so now I can also sometimes be found counting cells on a microscope.
What do you enjoy most about your job?
I really enjoy the variety of research projects that we receive and I also really enjoy that there are a variety of sequencing methods that we employ. It means that the no day looks like another day and I never feel like I am personally stagnating.
What’s your favourite piece of lab equipment and why?
I have a couple of favourite machines, all of them liquid handling. I love our Hamilton Microlab Star. It's a robust machine that can be fairly easily programmed ourselves and we use it for most of our PCR preparations and normalisations. I also really love our two Kingfishers, Apex and Flex. We have one in our pre-PCR lab and one in our post-PCR lab and they make high-throughput DNA extractions and bead cleans so much more straightforward.
If you would like to feature in our Scientists/Technicians under the Microscope, get in touch at sales@wolflabs.co.uk
