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Good morning team, how are you this morning?
Hi Daniel, good thanks.
We have got a nice batch of about sixty samples for you analyse.
I would like you to do total nitrogen on these samples
and it would be good if you can do it fairly quickly.
What sort of time do you think it would take?
It would take about 3 weeks. Is that alright?
Yeah, that’s excellent. Okay, I will see you later. See you.
My name is Thuygen Phan and I am a Lab Technician.
My major task is providing chemical analytical service to
research staff of forestry and Forest Products Division in WA.
I liaise with scientific staff when they reduce the
samples to understand clearly their requirement.
Then, I have to decide the most effective methods to achieve what is being asked.
Most of the time I use methods that are well
established and I use in many other labs
across Australia and the world but sometimes
I need to modify and adapt new methods.
If there are special analytical requirements
I have regular contact with technicians in many labs around Australia
so they are good resource for helping me tackle problems.
Mr Leinstein could please do indigest for total nitrogen and Shirley doing the extra.
I manage the Lab which means I have to coordinate the
staff resource with the analytical requirements.
We sit down together and generate a working plan. It can get hectic at the busy times.
We take lots of care both with our staff and with our samples.
One of the most important things is occupational health and safety
as we are dealing with many potential chemical, electrical and mechanical handling hazards.
Another important thing is quality control.
Acer researchers rely on the resource to be accurate and repeatable.
They look good Stein, yeah the colour reaction,
you got the right colour there. Nice and clear.
A research project usually takes 3 to 5 years
and thousands of analysis are done along the way.
The analysis I am running now is to determine the total nitrogen in soy samples
to improve eucalyptus plantation productivity through
the management of soil organic matter and nutrients.
Most of the equipment in this lab is computerised.
This one is a flow injection auto analyser which is the base on chemical reaction which
generate a colour the intensity of which is related to the concentration within the sample.
The results pass on to the computer and I check them
to make sure that they are in the expected range.
If they seem okay I calculate and collate the final data on the computer spread sheet
before distributing to research staff who are going to use the resource in their studies.
Sometimes you get a result that is not what you expected.
It is unpredictable just like life.
I was studying to be a lawyer in Vietnam but
escaped in 1983 to come to Australia as a refugee.
I had always wanted to do something with a white
lab coat so I did Diploma in Biochemistry at TAFE.
Hello Daniel. Hi team, how is it going?
Good thanks.
I got some total nitrogen result here for you Daniel.
Okay, let’s have a look at that. Yeah.
Ay yeah, that is pretty good.
I’ll have a look at these numbers when I am ready for
writing up my report in the next couple of weeks.
How is that? Good.
Thanks a lot for that.
In this job you are part of a large team where each person plays an
integral role and contributes to the achievement and outputs of the team.
I love science. I love my job.
It’s trained me to be a perfectionist.
Small mistakes can create large problems in the future.
I like to think that people can give me a
work to do and know it is in good hands.