Carleen Klumpp-Thomas | Director, Automation and Operations
National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences

Carleen, an expert in automation engineering by profession, earned her B.S. degree in Bioengineering from Syracuse University and her M.S. in Biomedical Engineering from NYU Tandon School of Engineering. She joined the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) 19 years ago as a foundational member specializing in robotics and high-throughput screening. 
 
Carleen oversees and orchestrates daily operations for the suite of evolving automated platforms within NCATS’ Research Services Core (RSC). RSC’s multi-disciplinary technologies continuously facilitate all NCATS’ research activities. These robotic systems perform a wide variety of processes including an array of existing and novel high-throughput screening assays to interrogate diverse sample libraries, through a more recent focus on chemistry workflows. Carleen and her team provide automation solutions leveraging in-house prototyping, custom development, and integration of emerging technologies, in collaboration with the biologists and chemists. She’s even been able to weave her passion for sustainability into NCATS lab operations by implementing consumable reusage.