Empowering Scientists Through Automation: Insights from BenchTalk 2025

BenchTalk 2025 underscored the growing intersection of AI, automation, and scientific collaboration. Team KC consultants Angel Kleiman and Caitlin Tormey were on the ground in Boston to weigh in on the key discussions happening about the future of laboratory informatics and new Benchling innovations.

Karchem Consulting specializes in providing customized laboratory informatics solutions to help biotech companies maximize their Benchling experience. As a Benchling partner, Karchem Consulting takes pride in staying on top of new features, best practices, and evolving industry trends, ensuring our clients get the most value from their platform.

Team KC has been attending BenchTalk since 2022, and this year Laboratory Informatics Consultants Angel Kleiman and Caitlin Tormey represented Karchem Consulting as attendees and as poster presenters. In addition to exploring the latest product innovations and connecting with peers, they showcased their work, highlighting a simplified workflow for plate planning and pooling. Stay tuned for an upcoming deep dive into their poster topic: From Plates to Pools!

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We sat down with Caitlin and Angel to hear their biggest takeaways, favorite moments, and what ideas they believe deserve continued discussion post-conference:

Q: Did you notice overarching themes throughout the conference?

Caitlin: “AI was definitely a central focus throughout the conference, but automation remains the foundation for achieving real speed and efficiency gains. While AI is generating a lot of excitement, many teams are still prioritizing automation as the most immediate and impactful way to streamline R&D workflows.”

Angel: “Three interconnected themes stood out: empowering scientists with self-service tools, ensuring high-quality, structured data, and accelerating the path from experiment to insight. Teams are building automation that puts powerful capabilities directly in scientists' hands without requiring constant IT support, while also emphasizing the importance of clean, well-structured data as the foundation for both AI and analytics. The ultimate goal across all these efforts is speed, reducing the time it takes to move from experimental data to actionable decisions.”

Q: What was one of the most interesting insights you took away from BenchTalk?

Caitlin: “Plating still remains a major challenge for teams across Benchling and the broader industry. It was exciting to share some of the approaches we’ve implemented to address this, and to hear how others are tackling similar issues. I’m also looking forward to testing Benchling’s new AI plating tool.”

Angel: “The diversity of App Canvas use cases was eye-opening. Seeing how teams use the same tool for everything from simple ETL workflows to complex multi-page request forms to full instrument automation showed just how flexible the platform can be. What works for a 500-person company looks very different from what works for a 50-person startup.”

Q: What was your favorite talk or presentation?

Caitlin: “The Benchling Developer Platform session was especially interesting. It showcased several creative approaches to building connected R&D experiences. I was particularly intrigued by the two different solutions presented for implementing Configuration as Code, which sparked ideas for how we could streamline change tracking and manage configurations more effectively across tenants.”

Angel: “The customer sessions on App Canvas implementations were my favorite. Hearing Beam, Aera, Sail, and Corteva share their real-world architectures and lessons learned was incredibly valuable. The recurring pattern of App Canvas → API Gateway → Lambda, along with the discussion on when to use EventBridge instead, gave me concrete takeaways I can apply immediately."

Q: What’s your “hot take” from the conference?

Caitlin: “Plating remains a major challenge for teams across Benchling and the broader industry, and it has yet to be perfected. It was exciting to share some of the approaches we’ve implemented to address this, and to hear how others are tackling similar issues.”

Angel: “There's a gap between AI hype and AI reality. While the industry is pushing hard on AI capabilities, customers are still more interested in and getting more value from solid automation foundations. The skepticism around AI tools suggests we need to focus on proven, deployed solutions before adding another layer of complexity. AI will be transformative, but only if it's built on top of reliable, well-architected systems.”

Q: How did attending the conference benefit you personally or professionally?

Caitlin: “It was great to connect with people in person, both those I’ve collaborated with on past projects and many Benchling team members I work with regularly! I also had the chance to meet new people with fresh ideas and perspectives. It’s always valuable to learn from others, and Benchtalk does a great job of bringing together people who are all working to solve similar challenges.”

Angel: “It was encouraging to see that our automation approach is not only aligned with the industry trends, but in many areas helping lead the conversation. It was energizing to see our poster generate so much interest and to realize we're tackling problems that resonate across the entire Benchling ecosystem. Plus, connecting with both customers and Benchling team members gave me a fresh perspective on where the platform is heading.” 

Q: What conversations or themes from the conference do you hope will carry forward into broader industry dialogue? 

Caitlin: “I hope to continue the conversation around the best ways to use AI in and out of the lab, especially as it relates to effective prompt writing, guidelines, testing, and security. This is only the beginning, and it will be exciting to see how these discussions evolve as more teams start putting AI tools into real practice.”

Angel: “The conversations around moving from pilot projects to production-grade solutions need to continue. Many teams have proven concepts, but scaling them sustainably is the real challenge. More dialogue around change management, user adoption, and long-term maintenance would help teams make smarter investments in automation and understand what it really takes to go from "works in demo" to "works in production every day." “

Our team loves hearing firsthand reflections after each event. Sitting down together to debrief not only reinforces what we learned but also sparks new ideas for how we can continue helping our clients make the most out of the laboratory informatics systems. What stood out most this year was the shared sense of momentum; teams across the Benchling community are asking the same questions around intuitive automation, structured data to support AI, and how to scale in a production-ready way. The organizations that move the fastest are those investing in scalable workflows first, so when AI and automation are ready, the groundwork is in place.

At Karchem Consulting, we offer a wide range of services designed to help labs optimize scientific workflows, data management, and compliance. Visit our partner page to learn more about how we work with our partners to deliver impactful solutions.