The Next Experiment

“Most assays don’t fail because they’re wrong… they fail because they’re fragile.” This time, Markus Gershater and Phil Kay sat down with Rob Howes (Head of Biology & DMPK at Charles River) to unpack what REALLY happens when you scale biology - and why most teams underestimate how quickly things fall apart. Rob’s been working with multi-dimensional experimentation since the early 2000s (back w...

“Some people don’t want experiments to be repeatable, they want them to feel like magic in their hands.” 🎙️The latest episode of “The Next Experiment” is here! This time, Markus and Phil sat down with Dr. Linden Schrecker, co-founder of SOLVE Chemistry, to explore the future of experimentation, automation, and why better data changes everything. From failed reactions caused by cold Oxford labs to...

“Drug-resistant bacteria played the ultimate uno reverse card on us.” 🎙️The latest episode of “The Next Experiment” is here! This time, Markus and Phil sat down with Adam Winnifrith - who shared his unique perspective on experimentation, scaling, and why understanding your system is always step one. Adam dives deep into the realities of doing science at scale, the pitfalls of jumping straight to a...

"I wouldn’t describe DOE as easy — I’d describe it as extremely worthwhile.” 🎙️The latest episode of “The Next Experiment” is here! This time, Markus and Phil sat down with Alex Rimmer, who brings a clear and practical perspective on DOE in biology – and some truly memorable lines about why experimentation so often fails to scale. Alex talks about discovering DOE out of necessity, not theory....

This time, Markus and Phil sat down with Owen Jonathan, who brings a refreshingly open and grounded perspective on learning – and teaching – DOE in real biological systems. What makes Owen’s story so compelling is how honestly he talks about coming into DOE with an open mind, realising what he hadn’t been taught, and then discovering how powerful the methodology becomes when biology is too complex...

If efficiency is the name of the game in process development, then Design of Experiments (DOE) is the playbook you didn’t know you needed. But how do you actually apply it in the messy, variable world of viral vector production? That’s exactly what we dig into in this episode. Keara Sutherland takes us through her journey from simple drug pairing experiments to complex, high-dimensional DOE campai...

Making multidimensional experiments a reality doesn’t just sit with one discipline.  Most commonly, it involves biologists and statisticians. So, what’s the key to open communication, and working together to do radically better biology? That’s what we explore, in this season’s bonus episode, filmed at Synthace’s Beer, Bytes and Biology annual event.  Conversation highlights 00:00 - Introduction 00...

If data is the new oil in an AI centric world, then amassing ever-larger multidimensional datasets can only be a good thing.  But how can we use these datasets to gain deeper insight into biology? This is the question we try to answer in season 1’s final episode. Between us, we bring views of the AI optimist and skeptic—with starry-eyed visions and sobering realities—to the table before reaching a...

To explore what the future of multidimensional experiments might look like, we decided to look back. In this episode, we explored how different multi-dimensional (aka Design of Experiments, or DOE) methods have come about to date.  Then, we pondered how these different methods, together with tech and software innovations, have brought both opportunities to scale multidimensional experimentation, a...

In this episode, we delve into Markus’ experiences with doing multidimensional biological experiments manually—from the exhilarating progress he made, to the definitive results he produced. Plus, we touch on how automation can scale multidimensional experimentation, and when is the right time to bring it into the mix. Conversation highlights 00:00 - Introduction 01:24 - Markus’ early manual, multi...

It’s easy to say that the tried-and-tested way of doing biology isn’t helping us progress. It’s quite another to embrace new approaches.  That’s what we’re covering in this second episode. We talk about communicating the power of multidimensional experimentation for biology, the insights they unlock—and how often, it takes some time to entertain new-and-improved ways of working. Conversation highl...

In our first episode of The Next Experiment, we start by unpacking that all-important question:  Why is biology so hard?  In order to answer it, we get into the fundamentals. The nature of nature.  We talk about how biology’s interconnectedness makes experimentation in biology so uncertain; why the standard method of varying one parameter at a time isn’t cutting it; and how switching to a multidim...

We’re Markus and Phil, a biologist and statistician. We decided to come together and discuss the best experiments to cut through biological complexity. If you have this sense that there might be a better way of making progress in biology, subscribe and join us. Stay tuned for our very first episode, launching on November 6th.