Meet the Editors

Michelle Taylor is the Editor-in-Chief of the Laboratory Group, comprising Labcompare, Laboratory Equipment, American Laboratory and Forensic. As EIC, she develops and leads new product offerings that reflect a commitment to the needs of the diverse scientific community. Michelle started in the industry in 2010 as editor of Laboratory Equipment. Well established, Michelle has attended dozens of scientific conferences and conducted hundreds of interviews with key opinion leaders, including multiple Nobel Prize winners. Always keeping a pulse on the industry, Michelle writes about current events, genomics, CRISPR-Cas9, STEM, next-generation sequencing and more. Michelle received her BA in journalism from Elon University in North Carolina. She can be reached at [email protected]. View articles by Michelle Taylor

Jake has a Bachelor of Science from West Virginia University, where he assisted with studies on native brook trout as well as invasive and endangered plant species. In his recent role as a Research Associate, he conducted third-party quality control testing of pharmaceutical products, utilizing an ICP-MS and AAS to perform elemental analysis of the samples. Currently, Jake is developing his skills as a web developer learning languages such as HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Serving as Labcompare’s Web Content Manager, Jake utilizes his in-depth background in the biological sciences as well as analytical chemistry to create useful directory content while optimizing the product search experience for scientists and lab professionals. He can be reached at [email protected].

James Kaufman is Founder/President Emeritus of the Laboratory Safety Institute (LSI)– an international, non-profit center for safety in science, industry, and education. He received his BA in chemistry from Tufts and his PhD in organic chemistry from WPI. Kaufman has educated more than 100,000 scientists and science educators in over 135 types of labs in 34 countries. Working for Dow, he authored "Laboratory Safety Guidelines." Over six million copies (in 23 languages) are in circulation. He was a 10-year member of the ACS Council Committee on Chemical Safety and is past-chair of the ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety. View articles by James A. Kaufman, Ph.D.

Jonathan "Munch" Keim found his initial home at Restek in technical service, where he spent eight years putting his BS in chemistry from Juniata College and MS in analytical chemistry from the University of Pittsburgh to work assisting Restek's customers. He started as a technical service specialist and ultimately rose to technical service manager before assuming the role of sample preparation product marketing manager. Since 2012, Jonathan has been supporting and expanding the company’s technical education program as education program manager. His work focuses on presentations, webinars, and videos that explore and explain gas and liquid chromatography, sample preparation, and troubleshooting. View articles by Jonathan “Munch” Keim

Rachel received her B.S. in Chemistry with minor in Math from the University of Cincinnati and her Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from University of North Carolina– Chapel Hill under the supervision of Prof. James Jorgenson. Upon completing her studies in 2009, Rachel took a post-doc at National Institute of Standards and Technology from 2009 to 2011, working on standard reference materials. In May 2011, Rachel joined Shimadzu as an Application Scientist working on LC and LC-MS/MS products. In 2013, Rachel transitioned into the product group as a Sr. LCMS Product Specialist and was promoted to LCMS Product Coordinator. In October 2017, Rachel became the first Marketing Manager for Forensic Science at Shimadzu Scientific Instruments, and then took on the responsibilities of the Clinical market in October 2021. In April 2023, Rachel joined Waters Corporation as the Global Forensic and Toxicology Marketing Manager.

Nicole Lock is the Group Product Manager, Molecular & Atomic Analysis at PAC. Nicole graduated from Seton Hill University with a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry. She started her career as a service engineer in a small third-party service organization repairing multiple brands’ GC and GCMS units. This skill set led Nicole to Shimadzu where she spent 15 years working in both the service and marketing department representing the GC and GCMS product lines. In March 2023, Nicole became the group product manager, molecular & atomic analysis at PAC. Her passion is helping new customers find answers to their unknown problems and current customers make the most of the systems they use every day. View articles by Nicole M. Lock

After earning a Ph.D. in Molecular Anthropology from the University of Cambridge, Kevin Miller actively engaged in promoting, researching, and furthering forensic science advances, and remains committed to this endeavor today. In addition to academic and instructive teaching experience including developing and directing the Professional Science Master’s Degree Program in Forensic Science at the California State University, Fresno, he led forensic scientists and crime scene investigators at federal, state and local levels of government while integrating new/emerging forensic technologies such as the first local DNA database to use probabilistic genotyping for mixture resolution, and early adoption of digital and cloud-based documentation/reporting. He developed patented software to automate forensic facial reconstruction, and served as Program Manager for a mtDNA population database for the FBI, and ultimately migrated this into the CODIS database. Miller is actively involved in forensic and crime scene associations, and publishes, lectures, and has testified on a wide breadth of forensic issues across the globe. View articles by Kevin Miller, MS, Ph.D.

Mark Paskanik, AIA, is a talented lab planner and licensed architect. With a focus on the lab ecosystem, Mark strives to make each lab successful through a holistic approach of examining the support system of the lab beyond its walls while understanding industry best practices to attract the best and brightest employees. He has over 20 years of experience programming, planning, and designing research facilities worldwide, and in that time, he has planned over 20 million square feet of laboratory projects ranging from wet lab to dry lab with specialties in BSL, GMP, and vivaria. View articles by Mark Paskanik, AIA

Tiffany is the Global Clinical Market Director on Agilent’s segment marketing team, and provides insight into Agilent’s overall business development, collaboration, and marketing strategy for the clinical diagnostics market. Tiffany joined Agilent in 2010 as part of the Varian acquisition, where she was an LC/MS applications chemist and has since held positions in product management and marketing management for the applied and clinical markets. In her spare time, Tiffany enjoys backpacking, camping, and spending time with family. She is based in El Dorado Hills, CA, which is a small town outside of Sacramento that one might pass on their way up to Lake Tahoe.

Charles Starr graduated from Northeast Louisiana University in with a degree in Clinical Laboratory Science. For nearly 20 years, he held various roles ranging from an evening/night bench technologist to a hospital lab evening and night supervisor. In conjunction with his lab supervisory duties, Charles assumed a teaching role as a part-time instructor at Northeast Louisiana University where he taught clinical chemistry and toxicology. Later, he became program director of the Laboratory Internship Program at St. Francis Medical Center in Louisiana. Currently, Charles serves as the Senior Director of Sales for the Clinical Laboratory Services–West Area Sales Team at Henry Schein. In this role, he is responsible for driving company strategy for the sales of laboratory instrumentation, supplies, and consumable products in all laboratories, waived and non-waived, that provides testing at the point of care of the patient. View articles by Charles Starr

Robert Stevenson has been involved in developing instrumentation and enabled applications since the late 1960's at firms including Varian, Altex, Bio-Rad, and TosoHaas. Stevenson has been a regular contributor to American Laboratory since its founding in 1968. He has authored more than 450 papers on new technology and applications. View articles by Robert Stevenson, Ph.D.

Bill White co-founded Offenberger & White, Inc., (OffWhite), a Marietta-based marketing consulting firm, in February 1985. Before co-founding OffWhite Marketing, White was a co-founder and director of marketing for Queue Systems Inc. He also previously served as the director of marketing for Forma Scientific, Inc. (now Thermo Fisher) from 1976 to 1980, after spending several years as chief technical researcher and writer in the Forma R&D and engineering group. Now in its 37th year, OffWhite has earned a reputation for content development and managing comprehensive marketing communication strategies for clients across the globe. Throughout his career, White has provided extensive technical assistance in the design, development, application and marketing of numerous applied technologies employed by the biomedical, life science and industrial laboratory community. He has written extensively on evolution of laboratory and industrial equipment, processes and instrumentation systems on behalf of more than 300 clients worldwide. View articles by William B. White