Research Software In Academia

I read with great interest “Research Software Goes to College” (C&EN, Jan. 13, page 19). Magid Abou-Gharbia, director of the Moulder Center for Drug Discovery Research at Temple University’s School of Pharmacy, states in the article, “Nobody in academia would think of getting something like this a few years ago.”

I would like to reference work carried out at Western Connecticut State University. These efforts involved integrating commercial laboratory information management systems into the curriculum in my Instrumental Methods of Analysis course at WCSU. This commercial-academic cooperation commenced in 1983 with the assistance of Wesley Thompson of Perkin-Elmer and Peter Berthrong and Paul Tyne of Beckman Coulter. The systems we used were the LIMS 2000 (Perkin-Elmer) and CALS LabManager (Beckman Coulter), with real-time data analysis using PeakPro and Pinnacle Chromatography Data Systems. Real-time data acquisition utilizing client/server network acquisition began in 1989 and lasted until my retirement in 2003.

Robert J. Merrer
Danbury, Conn.