Editor's comment: Let's talk labs...

For many, the first taste of life in a laboratory would have come while at secondary, or high school.

But as a student’s love of the ’sciences’ increases, work in a laboratory becomes about far more than Bunsen burners and chemical reactions witnessed from behind a sheet a protective glass.

As much as anything, it becomes about the development and understanding of better research methodologies, novel therapies and new technologies.

My first encounter with a high-tech lab came in June last year as I was conducting research in Stuttgart, Germany for an article that would appear in Process Engineering magazine the following month.

In that instance, I was kept at a distance behind far more than a sheet of protective glass, as the researchers inside the lab worked on a number of new water purification techniques.

It is in such an environment that some of the greatest discoveries have been made.

Nearly 50 years ago, Stepanie Kwolek, inventor of the tough aramid structure Kevlar, was working at DuPont’s Experimental Station near Wilmington, US on a fibre to reinforce tyres.

Kwolek, who passed away this year, was also born on this day in 1923.

What Kwolek invented 42 years later was a solution of rigid-chain polymers that could be spun into a strong, stiff material - most famously used in bullet-proof vests.

Kwolek’s discovery, unsurprisingly, came from the work she was conducting in a laboratory, as is almost always the case with scientific breakthroughs.

Modern laboratories operate in much the same way.

Life sciences laboratories, in the UK for example, are often purpose-built to accommodate a wide range of interdisciplinary research projects.

The Institute for Life Sciences at the University of Southampton features a number of shared laboratories that include tissue culture laboratories, electrophysiology facilities, a protein production laboratory, genomics equipment including real-time PCR, radiation laboratories and specialised research space for CL2 microbiology.

This month alone, researchers at the university have shown how a drug developed initially for sufferers of arthritis, possesses the ability to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.

It is, therefore, perhaps this sense of unity seen throughout much of our university lab space that could be better applied across more of the scientific community.

Research parks across the UK clearly have this in mind, and in boosting our understanding of all things science, it feels like a step in the right direction.

However, can more now be to done to ensure top researchers are given access to the best scientific facilities across the globe?