Meniscus

Liquid-handling robots are expensive, large and bound to a vendor’s consumables. A small lab usually does its pipetting by hand, for hours, and makes errors in the last hour. Meniscus builds a robot that fits on an ordinary bench and runs on a standard power socket.

Kiri Anderson is a mechanical engineer who spent seven years at an instrument maker. Joost van Dalen was a lab manager in Leiden and has opinions about how much a scientist should type. The robot handles the common jobs: serial dilutions, plate transfers, reagent mixing. Setting up a protocol takes less than an afternoon, and the lab keeps the files.

Meniscus has placed about 120 units in labs across Europe and the United States. Consumables are open, so a lab can buy tips anywhere. Most buyers are academic groups and small contract labs with a lab manager as the champion.