[Readers Insight] Become an “Engineer”, Instead of an “Inspector”

Author: Chromatography Mound

When I first started as a lab operator, I merely followed the existing experimental procedures and didn’t probe further—until I developed an interest in research and publishing papers. Not wanting to remain merely an “inspector,” I approached a senior engineer in the lab and asked plainly,

“I’d like to write a paper based on our routine projects, but I don’t know how to design a new experiment. Could you help me?”

Without hesitation, he picked up a pen, thought for about five minutes, and sketched a preliminary experimental plan—steps, reagents, quantities, everything. I was genuinely impressed.

Inspired by my admiration for that engineer and by my growing curiosity about chromatography, I formed a habit of seeking to understand the why behind every procedure. Whenever I pick up a standard, I make it a point to understand each step, every reagent, and even the thought process of the protocol’s author. This habit has accumulated many fragments of knowledge, and I soon realized I needed a coherent theoretical framework to organize and support those fragments.

From that point on, my work shifted from being confined to mechanical operation to focusing more on theoretical understanding and systematic experimentation—constantly testing, failing, and learning—thus accumulating substantial practical experience.

For example, my first paper in the field involved simultaneous detection of more than a dozen compounds of different types. The greatest challenge, naturally, was chromatographic separation. Consider that among a dozen different compounds there will inevitably be some with very similar polarity; using a standard HPLC setup with a 5 μm C18 column, no matter how the gradient is adjusted, one or two pairs will resist baseline separation.

By carefully controlling various parameters—flow rate, column temperature, choice of column, and more—I ultimately achieved baseline separation of all compounds under extreme but valid conditions. Over the course of that work, I tried well over a hundred instrument methods, which is why I now have strong expertise in chromatographic separation.

However, chromatography alone was only the minimum requirement for publication. That paper was rejected by several journals (I spent over RMB 1,000 on review fees) and ultimately appeared only in a journal’s supplement—those who have published know what that implies.

Fortunately, that was not my last paper. To find research with greater impact, I began studying experiments conducted by other colleagues in the lab, learning their underlying logic and reasoning, and even reaching out to other laboratories to learn less-common methods. As a result, I gained a wealth of experience and became capable of solving most problems encountered in our lab.