Lab Talk: Urban Liebel talking about pushing the boundaries in life sciences through automation, digitization and data science

He’s a true innovator and has been a good friend of Intuity for many years. After he obtained his Phd at EMBL in Heidelberg Urban founded the “High Content Screening Center” and the “Accelerator Lab” at KIT Karlsruhe (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology). In 2012 he teamed up with several partners and started ACQUIFER, which develops smart high content screening microscopes and large scale data handling devices called “hives”. Both products are unique in concept and quality.

Urban and Intuity share many perspectives on how technology can foster innovation and transform what products and services look like. For instance, the conceptual idea of machinetalk.cc is already the reality in ACQUIFERs imaging machines (called Aquascript). Urbans work is a fascinating cross-over of genetics, optics, robotics, mechanical engineering, pharmaceutical research, image processing, and large scale data handling.

The mantra is: Why not?

Urban has always been a trans-disciplinist. By now, his works covers five fields of expertise, into which he gave us insights by showing impressive pictures and relating surprising anecdotes. He inspired us to stay hungry for innovation and for change. After the talk, we had an vivid discussion about how modular and interoperable his ideas and solutions are, within and beyond biological questions. Dear Urban, thank you for the great lab talk.

ACQUIFER