You may be familiar with our Green Button Go® software, but do you know the people behind it? In this new blog series, we’re profiling some of the amazingly talented employees here at Biosero.
Today we’re getting to know Ryan Bernhardt, Chief Commercial Officer. He joined the company after being a veteran user of Green Button Go tools at Eli Lilly and Company, where he led a team of automation engineers and scientists in the design, implementation, and operation of innovative initiatives across Lilly’s Research and Development Laboratories. He holds a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Marian University in Indianapolis.
Q: What do you do at Biosero?
A: My number one function is business development — creating strategic partnerships, collaborations, and commercial agreements to enable the use of Green Button Go products in diverse markets. I also focus on strategy and the product roadmap to ensure that we have products that differentiate us. I will be working with account managers to roll out our Green Button Go Orchestrator product, which is unique to Biosero and is designed to help labs that need to run processes in a 24/7 manner. No one else in the market is offering anything like this.
Q: What makes the Green Button Go Orchestrator product special?
A: It builds on the foundation of Green Button Go Scheduler software. I think of it like an air traffic control tower that has to keep track of all the planes on the runways and in flight. Green Button Go Orchestrator was designed to oversee all of the lab’s processes; from manual tasks to fully automated workflows by communicating parameters and commands to individual instruments or workstations that are running Green Button Go Scheduler or other native software. It emerged from the concept of a closed-loop process for drug discovery, where it was used to connect historically siloed functions in a centralized model.
Q: How did you get on this career path?
A: My background is in chemistry and business. From a very early age I absolutely loved science, but I’ve always liked the business side of science. Automation has been a perfect blend of those two passions because it focuses on process improvement and optimization. How do we increase productivity, decrease cycle times, increase data quality, minimize costs, and increase efficiency within the lab? That’s what automation can do.
Q: What brought you to Biosero?
A: I worked with Biosero for more than six years as a customer and I’ve been very impressed with the product, the mission, the values, and the team. I came here to make a difference in the world through automation and technology. I see Biosero as an opportunity to have a much broader impact by enabling many different companies and institutions to accelerate their efforts to solve some of the world’s most difficult and dangerous diseases.
Q: What’s one thing you wish more people knew about laboratory automation?
A: Historically, this industry has always thought about a hardware-centric solution. But I believe that if you come at it with a software-centric solution, you have many more opportunities to achieve success. Software is modular, flexible, and expandible. A software-centric solution enables you to pivot and evolve as needs change.
Q: If you could automate anything in your life, what would it be?
A: My golf swing! I find it’s really good some days, but when I go out the next day, it’s not the same.
Q: What’s your best career advice?
A: Look at every opportunity in your career path as an opportunity to add a different tool to your toolbox. Even if it doesn’t seem important when you first learn it, if you capture that tool there’s somewhere later in life when you’ll be able to pull it out and use it in a different application.
Q: What was the first thing you ever wanted to be when you grew up?
A: A police officer.
Q: What’s something your colleagues don’t know about you?
A: I won a regional Emmy award for a commercial that I made in college. It was for my family’s golf business.