Symyx Benchtop System Receives New Product Award at LabAutomation2007 Conference

The Association for Laboratory Automation (ALA) and Symyx Technologies, Inc. today announced that Symyx has been awarded the ALA’s New Product Award (NPA) Designation at this year’s LabAutomation conference.

Symyx received the award for its Benchtop System, a new self-contained unit that combines powder- and liquid-handling capabilities and automates multiple steps of experimental procedures. The ALA’s New Product Award showcases the laboratory automation industry’s finest new products, software and services. Symyx is one of three recipients selected from more than 35 new products launched at this year’s LabAutomation conference in Palm Springs, Calif, held January 27-31.

“It is a significant achievement to receive the 2007 ALA New Product Award, especially in light of the intense and wide ranging competition for the NPA Designation at this year’s conference,” said ALA Executive Director Greg Dummer. “Our objective with this award is to showcase the industry’s finest new products and services. Thus, the scoring criteria included breadth of market opportunity, impact on the field of laboratory automation and technology, extraordinary technical originality and quality of support data. This award affirms Symyx’s position as an innovator in the field of laboratory instrumentation and informatics.”

Benchtop Systems increase testing capacity by 10–100 times and take labor-intensive, repetitive work away from scientists, freeing them to better utilize their training and talents. Symyx’s Benchtop System packages the power of automation to enable the parallel processing of multiple experimental procedures on one system. It utilizes the hardware framework of Symyx’s Core Module, and includes miniaturized materials preparation capabilities (dispensing capabilities for low viscosity aqueous and organic solutions, viscous semi-solids, and powder materials), sample processing capabilities (heating, cooling, mixing, and filtration), and sample analysis capabilities (weights, pH, imaging) – all combined with automated instrument control. The offering is powered by Symyx Software, providing a single experiment design and execution environment that reduces instrumentation set-up and data-handling overhead. The system hardware and software are scaleable to perform automated experimentation for complete lab processes which would include integration with lab equipment and the ability to support document browsing and searching, enterprise-level security and auditing, and configurable document workflow.

“We are honored to receive industry acknowledgment for our efforts,” said Paul Nowak, chief operating officer of Symyx. “LabAutomation was the right place to launch this new product because our new Benchtop System addresses the needs of scientists who want to leverage advances in automation and data integration to make best use of their time and improve R&D productivity.”