Visitors to the Westburg website see Lars van der Velden’s photo in the bottom-right corner of the screen. He is part of the Scientific Support team and responds to messages through the chat window. Asked whether the photo makes him a familiar face, he laughs. “No, people don’t recognize me!”
Lars studied molecular and cellular life sciences, with a particular interest in microbiology. During a six-month research period in the United States, he studied interactions between viruses and archaea in hot-spring environments.
One part of the project involved producing a toxin associated with those interactions so the team could analyze it further. The team tried to produce the protein in E. coli, but it didn't work. “We tried different variations of the approach for months,” Lars says. One possibility was that the protein itself was toxic to E. coli, which made it difficult to produce in living cells.
Two years later, while working at Westburg, Lars came across the RTS protein-expression kits from biotechrabbit.
“I saw the RTS protein-expression kits from biotechrabbit and immediately thought: I should have done this!”
The kits use cell-free protein-expression technology based on cell lysates. The system uses the cellular machinery in a lysate and doesn't rely on living E. coli cells to produce the protein.
“I contacted my former supervisor about it, and he also wondered why we hadn’t thought of that approach earlier,” Lars says. Whether a cell-free system would have worked for that protein remains untested.
The episode shows how a problem looks after months of work. “When you’ve been working on something for a long time, you can develop tunnel vision,” Lars says. “You keep trying different versions of the same approach without considering that there might be a completely different way to do it.”
His laboratory background shapes how he handles questions in the chat. “You can look at a question and think you know the answer,” he says. “But when you have practical laboratory experience, you automatically start considering other aspects that might affect the experiment.”
A chat message reaches the team directly. They welcome the visitor and review the question to decide who can help best: Scientific Support or Customer Service. Some visitors want to know whether Westburg carries a particular product. Others have a scientific question or need help with an application.
Lars starts with the experiment. “First, you need to understand what they’re doing, what they’re working with, and what they ultimately want to achieve,” he says. A question usually covers one problem in a workflow, and that problem sits inside a bigger experiment.
“You might find a product that solves their immediate problem, but your recommendation could change completely depending on what they want to do afterward.”
That sometimes leads to advising against a purchase. “Researchers know their experiments better than I do, while I might know more about the differences between certain products,” Lars says. “Sometimes you meet somewhere in the middle, sometimes their approach is better, and sometimes I suggest trying something different.”
Some questions take time. One customer ordered a kit and wasn't sure how to calculate the requirements described in the protocol. Lars and the customer reviewed what the customer had, looked at the relevant requirements, and checked scientific articles to work out the calculations.
“I think the entire conversation took about two hours,” Lars says. “But in the end, we figured it out, and the customer was really happy.”
As AI chatbots become more common, Lars sees value in the human side of the chat. “We’ve all had conversations with chatbots that seem to know how to answer every question except the one you’re actually asking,” he says.
A human reply can take longer. Lars sometimes needs to look something up, check with the warehouse or ask a colleague. The aim, he says, is “to give someone an answer that actually helps them move forward.”
Lars no longer works in a laboratory, and Scientific Support keeps him close to research through the range of workflows, applications and research topics that reach him.
“Through scientific support, you get to learn about all kinds of experiments,” he says. “So you’re helping someone else with their research, but at the same time you’re staying involved in science yourself. That’s what makes the job interesting.”
Bring your experiment to Scientific Support.
Lars and the team can think along with you about the products and approach that fit your application.