Welcome to the Abcam blog

As one of our scientific support team in the US, Ken is used to fielding calls. But recently he got a rather unusual inquiry... I phoned him up for an interview!

Q: Hi Ken, what do you do in an average day?

A: I would say that I spend 50% of my time on the phone with customers, troubleshooting protocols and helping them selecting the correct product for their research.

A large proportion of callers are scientists that I've spoken to before. They see us as their main scientific resource, and I think that's important: being more than just 'tech support' for our antibodies but being 'science support' for the people who call us. It's great to know that they trust our judgment.

Q: How does it feel to be the 'human face' of Molly the sheep! :)

A: Very easy! I think we're already making a big effort to be a friendly and 'human' company already, so science support is a part of that, but not the only part. We get lots of good feedback about the website being very easy to use, maybe that's a bit 'personable' too. So hopefully scientists have the expectation before they even call us.

Q: What experience do you have?

A: I have a bit of a weird background because I am an organic chemist by training. That's been useful in some ways and not so useful in others! It does mean I have a lot more instrumental experience in IHC and FACS.

Q: What's the strangest inquiry you've had?

A: The strangest inquiry I've ever had was when somebody rang up about an antibody against a steroid and wanted to know how much he should inject! I guess he must have thought an antibody against a steroid was as good as the real thing.

Q: I don't think he would have got the results he wanted... what did you end up saying to him?

A: That we sell research-grade antibodies only and that we would strongly discourage him as the other contents of the antibody could be lethal...

Q: What are some useful resources you use every day?

A: I definitely use SwissProt at least ten times a day; it's by far the most useful research tool. The big advantage for me and the scientists I speak to is that we link directly to the SwissProt entry on our datasheets, so I can find out the primary sequence quickly. You'd be amazed how many people don't know about it – so it's great to recommend a tool to a scientist that can help other areas of their research, as well as answering their immediate problem.

Apart from SwissProt, I use Pubmed a lot to find out what papers our anitbodies have been used in, which you can go straight to from the references tab on our datasheets.

Q: What do you enjoy most about working for Abcam's scientific support?

A: One of the best things about Abcam is that there's great collaboration between departments. This means we have lots of control over the quality of our datasheets. We can update a them instantly online, so when a scientist phones up with a problem, they can see an immediate improvement. With other companies where maybe you have to ask the lab to rewrite a protocol pdf and upload it... you don't get that.

The people I work with in science support are really committed to doing a good job and enjoying it at the same time!

If you have questions of your own you can check out our protocols and troubleshooting tips, get technical help on the website, see FAQs, or find out how to contact us from your country.