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People of CBJ: Robin Marks

December 18, 2021 – FYI, News

“My family has always worked in labs. There are many lab professionals in the family. My grandfather was a biochemist in organic steroid chemistry. My mother was a chemist and worked in laboratory information services. Growing up, my mom brought home rescue lab rabbits. This was during a time when you needed to make your own lab reagents with rabbit plasma for immunochemistry fertility testing. Their names were Estradiol and Testosterone. I have stitches in my finger from when my rabbits mistook me for a carrot.”

Lead Clinical Laboratory Scientist Robin Marks is in charge of Bartlett Regional Hospital’s COVID-19 molecular testing lab. If you get tested at CBJ’s drive-thru testing facility or the Juneau School District, your test gets analyzed there. Since February, when Bartlett was the first hospital in the state to be equipped with a Roche Cobas 6800 Analyzer, the lab has run at least 30,000 COVID-19 tests.

Robin acknowledges the pivotal role COVID-19 testing plays in helping to keep schools and businesses open. Her main motivation for taking on the top job in the BRH molecular lab was her eight-year old daughter. While homeschooling last year, “She said, ‘I’m tired of being at home, so we need a scientist to fix this!’”