Colony screening scale up idea

 

The core of my research group was fully automated iBioFab, and I have been thinking if I can contribute by automating the imprint-based colony screening workflow.  

I think the way to do this is developing a single box (robot) that contains all automations needed to perform sample preparation for the imprint based colony screening. Basically if a petri dish is put into the box by the robotic arm of the iBioFab, it will spit out 1) MALDI plate with the imprinted and matrix-coated colonies and the 2)geometry file for targeting the colonies by MALDI-MS.  

I feel if you can get me a mechanical engineering student collaborator, I can develop it in 6 months because I have all other skills needed like electronics/controls/programming that I gained from my MS work. Also, I have the mature colony screening protocol (+macroMS) that is ready to be automated. The MALDI-MS part is still off-line but large part of Test theme work is for developing towards fully automated iBioFab.

My idea for the machine is the following. I believe this can be packed into a box in an ibioFab.