Carol Ann Homon, PhD, saw her first laboratory robot in 1984 and was immediately converted. “I was an automation freak from day one,” says Homon, associate director of biomolecular screening at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals Inc., Ridgefield, Conn. “In those days, people were really starting to feel the effects of hand pipetting. My original idea for automation was to eliminate stress on people from doing repetitive actions.”
