Here at Biosero, we define our success not by revenue or the number of systems we install, but by what we help our customers accomplish. We rely on people like Imad Mansour, Senior Director of Product, to keep us in tune with our users’ goals and build products that meet those needs. He joined Biosero in 2020.
Q: What do you do at Biosero?
A: I’m responsible for the overall product vision. My role is to ensure that what we are building will serve and advance the needs of our customers both today and tomorrow. Our software makes complex integrations possible, ensures they are easy to use, and performs exceptionally well. My current focus is on the Green Button Go and Orchestrator product families. Products that make it possible to deliver solutions ranging from small reader/feeder systems to large scale bio-factories. I make sure that our software products are robust and reliable solutions that labs can depend on every day.
To get there, I spent quite a bit of time with our customers to understand what’s slowing them down and what opportunities they have in the lab. I also spend time talking to scientists who are interested in scaling up their lab automation by managing the Biosero Acceleration Lab. In the Acceleration Lab, we’ve built our own advanced laboratory that we can use to demonstrate what’s possible in terms of lab automation today and have discussions about what people want to achieve.
With a clear picture of our customers’ needs in mind, I then work closely with our development teams at Biosero to plan, design, and build new features that will make the difference. We are currently building out the next generation of Green Button Go and Orchestrator with streamlined user experiences and more useful tools. I can’t wait to tell you more about what’s coming up in the next year. Soon!
Q: How did you get on this career path?
A: After training as a biologist, I took a detour and worked in the restaurant business and the music industry for a few years. An odd turn of events, but I remain grateful for the experiences. When I decided to return to science I landed in the high-throughput screening lab at Wyeth, where I was introduced to the use of robotics within the drug development discipline. In the years I spent doing HTS, life science automation grew exponentially. In the span of seven years, we scaled our operation from several hundred samples per day to hundreds of thousands per day. It was a growth rate that could only have been possible through close partnership and collaboration with instrument vendors. In addition to running many screens, I was intimately involved in almost every aspect of building an HTS lab. After several years I decided that I wanted to move out of the lab and focus on building automation.
Q: What brought you to Biosero?
A: The leadership and the technology. When I came here to meet the team and saw the Green Button Go software, I realized what Biosero is offering the life science community is a significant step forward from what I had been seeing for the past 10 years. This was a mission I could support. Working with this team was also a really big attraction.
Q: What’s one thing you wish more people knew about laboratory automation?
A: The role of automation in Life Science is far greater than most people know, and it is becoming increasingly more so. The scale at which samples need to be tested and the complexity of the processes involved cannot be addressed without automation. And the beauty of it is that the Life Science community has become so comfortable with automation that they are now turning to it to solve problems that would have been untouchable five years ago.
Q: If you could automate anything in your life, what would it be?
A: Laundry and dishes.
Q: What’s your best career advice?
A: A career doesn’t have to define who you are, but don’t waste your life on one that doesn’t bring real value or meaning to you.
Q: What was the first thing you ever wanted to be when you grew up?
A: I wanted to build rockets and go into space. Looking back on it, astronomy was my first science. I didn’t just want to understand it, I wanted to understand the tools involved. At ten years old, I taught myself the principles of rocketry and telescopes alongside star and planetary formation.
Q: What’s something your colleagues don’t know about you?
A: Music is my happy place. I listen to funk, punk, rock, jazz, classical, world, and whatever else a particular moment’s need requires. Everything from Shankar to Shostakovich to Shpongle. The irony though is that despite my love of it and that I come from a family of some musical renown, I can’t play an instrument or hold a tune.
