[Abstract]
Efficient research labs are important support to cultivating innovative talents and study of frontier sciences, and sound safety management strategy for research labs is necessary to ensure their safe and stable operation. Given our thoughts on work experiences in “the Recruitment Program of Global Experts” labs and management status of research labs over the past seven years, this paper proposes safe and efficient management strategies for labs from the perspectives of systematic management of labs, ensuring safe operation of labs, enhancing utilization of instruments and equipment, saving space and manpower as well as exerting team power to maximum potential.
Key Words
Research Labs; Lab Management; Management of Instruments and Equipment
In recent years, Chinese government has invested more in the causes of scientific research and education, leading to booming labs in various colleges and universities, obviously improved experimental conditions and advanced teaching and research qualities. On October 24, 2015, the State Council issued Overall Plan for Coordinately Advancing the Construction of World First-class Universities and First-class Disciplines, by which improving the level of scientific research is one of the ten key tasks of constructing “world-class universities and first-class disciplines.” However, research-based labs are basic units of institution of higher education for innovation in scientific research, and important bases for conducting high-level basic researches, cultivating the talents holding master’s and doctoral degrees and carrying out academic exchanges. The status of research-based labs directly reflects their level and capacity in scientific research, and management of research-based labs becomes a crucial link in the construction of “world-class universities and first-class disciplines.” An excellent research team cannot work without precise and efficient management, while construction and management of labs is an arduous and complicated task, which needs continuous exploration, summary, improvement and perfection, in order to improve the level and efficiency of scientific research. This paper, given actual situation of research labs for key disciplines of universities of agriculture and forestry as well as work experience in operating ”the Recruitment Program of Global Experts” labs over the years, tentatively discussed the strategies for management of research labs.
1. Management Status of Research Labs
Over the years, research labs in universities differ to some degree from each other in terms of different settings of disciplines, of which most research labs are mainly adopted traditional tutor responsibility system, that is, each tutor of master and PhD candidates has his/her own lab for doing scientific research work, and each lab has basic conditions for scientific research, including necessary test conditions such as operating space, instruments and equipment, reagents and consumables, and so on; postgraduates are key personnel of research labs; big research group is composed of multiple teachers and technical staffs of experiments; collages and schools will have special platforms and labs for scientific research services; for universities of agriculture and forestry, a large number of experimental stations, labs such as farmlands and greenhouses are needed; the strategies for systematic management of labs, ensuring safe operation of labs, improving the utilization of instruments and equipment, saving space and manpower and exerting team power to maximum degree become key issues reflected by lab managers.
2. Management Strategy of Labs
In order to manage efficient research labs in a safe and effective manner, this paper divided daily management of labs into several aspects and described management methods in terms of different aspects, for easy communications and references by management personnel of labs.
2.1 Safety Management of Labs
The importance of safety work in labs is well known, in many labs, however, safety work turns to be an empty talk told again and again at each regular meeting and lacks of substantially in-depth work. Our university highly values safety management of labs, to the extent that all staffs working in the labs must take an exam on lab examination system and obtain work card for assignment for scientific experiment. Lab examination management system, consisting of safety knowledge about chemistry, medicine and biology, machinery and architecture, electric equipment, radiation and network etc., is a very comprehensive and efficient safety knowledge learning system, and learning these safety knowledge reflects the sense of responsibility for the safety of human life and national property, and it is an indispensable process of safety work in the labs. The probability of safety accidents will be reduced substantially only on condition that each staff of each lab takes safety in the first place in his/her awareness of safety. In addition to obtaining safety operation license, lab management staff should also maintain electrical equipment on a regular basis, to avoid circuit aging and eradicate potential risk. Safety is an awareness needing often instillation and remaindering, so as to nip the hazard in the bud.
2.2 Management of Reagents and Consumables
Reagents and consumables are essential materials used in scientific experiments and account for large portion of research expenditures, so sound management may help save large amount of expenses to avoid the waste of material and financial resources that could have been avoided. Common problems encountered in the management process of reagents and consumables are:  (1) Waste of reagents from repetitive purchasing; (2) Contamination due to improper storage of reagents and waste of reagents due to decomposition etc.; and (3) Environmental hazard and even potential safety hazard due to improper handling of wastes and effluents after use. Obviously, better management of reagents and consumables is the problem worthy of thinking by lab managers. For example, designating a person responsible for ordering reagents, filing reagents and consumables needed by the lab per day, open and transparent purchasing to avoid repetitive purchasing; designate a person responsible for keeping and registering receiving of precious reagents, storage location referencing to storage condition for specific reagents; familiarizing properties and usages of reagents before use and purchase, proper handling of effluents and wastes and sorting of wastes; for reagents no longer needed by the labs, transfer such reagents for free within the university, by taking these measures, we will not only effectively utilize and save resources, but also reduce the costs of recycling of used reagents. Assigning some specific works in the labs to each teacher and postgraduate, mobilizing everyone’s initiative for collective management, to arouse everyone sense of responsibility and their pride as owners; practicing mass supervision system, for timely supervision and treatment of lab operation and nonstandard things; practicing distributed and coordinated work system, such a method is helpful to improving the efficiency of labs.
2.3 Management of Instruments and Equipment
2.3.1 Daily Instruments and Equipment
For a research lab, many types of analytical and testing equipment are used on a daily basis, and it is impossible to have everyone mastering usages of these instruments and equipment. In general, a postgraduate or a teacher related to daily experiments of researchers can be designated as the lab leader, in this way, the lab leader will soon become an expert of experiments or instruments, who will not only be able to teach other lab members to use the equipment, but also help solving the problems encountered during experiments. The lab leader and lab manager should work together for servicing and maintenance of instruments.
2.3.2 Large Instruments and Equipment
Large instruments and equipment usually refer to those with unit price exceeding ¥0.4 million, such equipment are of lower frequency of use in comparison with ordinary experimental equipment in research labs, however, large instruments and equipment are widely applied and applicable to multidisciplinary fields, thus it is necessary for sharing large instruments. At present, most universities have large instruments sharing system, which allows appointment-based use for all internal staffs and even researchers from other universities, so as to improve the utilization of instruments and cost-effective usage. However, many problems exist in operation management of instruments, for example, insufficient number of dedicated management staffs, undue maintenance of instruments, a few operators are able to skillfully operate the instruments due to failure of extensive training etc.; foreign universities often manage large instruments with a training, assessment, free appointment and autonomous test model, on the grounds that, due to a lot of uncertain factors in scientific research, when you are unable to do test on time as a result of unprepared samples at the appointed time for test or by other cause, you can cancel your appointment, in this way, others may appoint this time in place of you, so as to make full use of the instruments; although domestically registration system of equipment is implemented, it becomes mere formality in most cases, leading to frequent occurrence of short and omitted registrations, thus it is difficult to reflect actual condition of use of equipment; in case of problems with the equipment during use, it is hard to investigate the responsibility or find the cause of such problems. Therefore, facilitating better operation and making full use of large instruments are only achievable with rigorous training, autonomous appointment, independent operation and resource sharing.
2.4 Other Managements
Indeed, a research lab is “fully equipped though in small scale”, in addition to hardware for scientific research, it involves personnel, information and financial managements etc., key personnel of a lab are mainly comprised of postgraduates, who make great contribution to the undertaking of scientific research in the mindset of study and learning skills, thus it’s critical to motivate their passion and mobilize their initiative to create higher academic achievements, in addition to tutor’s instructions and guidance, lab manager should also take into full consideration, such as arranging appropriate personnel to act as lab leader or responsible for establishing equipment management system and sound attendance system etc.; with an increasing number of instruments for lab operation, increase of subject projects and continuous publication of thesis, abundant training materials, dissertations and patents etc. need documents and data management by lab manger with graduation of postgraduates; dissertations and patents etc. are important basis for application for new project or construction of scientific research platform, submission of work summary required by the employer and appraisal of excellent researchers. Lab manager should not only archive the information on researchers’ project (Incl. declaration of the project, terms of reference, interim progress report, summary report together with relevant text and sample information), articles, (Incl. publicly published articles and conference papers on SCI, EI and core journals in Chinese language etc.) and patents etc., and archive for each graduate in terms of original data, graduation thesis, bibliography and other text and sample information related to the lab, to provide solid basis for the development of subsequent research subjects. Financial management mainly serving operation funds for research labs, should ensure reasonable use, timely reimbursement and actual expenditure of project funds basically consistent with the budget, to avoid running into trouble that could have been avoided at the time of conclusion.
3. Conclusion
Lab management can be called dealing with all aspects, thus the functional goal of a research lab manager should be establishing scientific and sound lab management system, implementing people oriented management, exerting great efforts to carrying out scientific management throughout the process of scientific research, ensuring smooth progress of research work, and offering better service to the researchers. Each lab manager is worthy of making personal contribution to successful management of research lab, improvement in scientific research, disciplinary development, specialty construction and improving comprehensive strength of the university.