Merle Preuss

Why this persona fits the audience

Coordinates a 5-person R&D lab in Berlin where sample IDs, experiment notes, and instrument exports are kept in Google Sheets, Notion, and a few shared folders. They are the person who reconciles handwritten bench notes with electronic records for the rest of the team.

• Age: 29
• Location: Berlin, Germany
• Occupation: Lab Manager
• Income: €63k
• Education: M.Sc. in Molecular Biology
• Company size: 5-person biotech startup
• Years in role: 3 years

“I didn’t sign up to be the household manager of science—my PhD was supposed to be about discovery, not reconciling who used the last of the RNase-free water.”

Merle Preuss grew up in Würzburg, where her fascination with molecular biology began in her father’s chemistry textbook-stacked home office. After studying biochemistry at Leipzig, she moved to Berlin for her master’s, staying for the city’s chaotic energy and the startup scene. Now at AlgoBios, a 3-year-old biotech company developing CRISPR-based diagnostics, she’s the sole lab manager—a role that’s 50% scientist, 30% IT support, and 20% therapist. Her days are a relentless loop of troubleshooting, documenting, and translating between the lab technicians’ needs and the execs’ demands. The team’s workflow is a patchwork of free tools that frustrate her but somehow work (for now). She’s pushed for a proper LIMS before, but the budget went to ‘more critical’ things. Recently, she spent a weekend building a custom Python script to auto-parse instrument outputs into Google Sheets—‘because nobody else would.’ She dreams of a system where data flows effortlessly, but in the meantime, she’s the human bridge between chaos and clarity. Her ideal week involves zero ad-hoc cleanup tasks, a fully updated protocol library, and time to finally publish the assay optimization paper she’s been delaying. Money isn’t a game-changer—she’d rather invest in tools than status—but she resents the constant fire drills that distract from real science. Her cat, Loki, is the only creature in her life that respects the word ‘no.’

Background & daily life

A day in their life

6:30 AM: Coffee and podcast in bed, then a 45-minute walk to the lab while mentally reviewing the day’s to-do list. 8:30 AM: Morning team huddle where she fields 3 urgent requests (a failed primer set, a missing sample, and an instrument calibration). 10:00 AM: Deep work on documenting a new assay protocol in Notion (which will be ignored in 2 weeks). 12:30 PM: Lunch at the lab’s shared kitchen, debating the merits of a hypothetical LIMS with the CSO. 1:30 PM: Chasing down why yesterday’s qPCR results are unreliable (turns out someone used the wrong pipette). 4:00 PM: Email battle with IT over shared folder permissions. 6:30 PM: Commute home listening to science fiction audiobooks. 7:00 PM: Coffee roasting experiments in her tiny kitchen while Loki knocks things off counters. 9:00 PM: Finally organizing the week’s lab notes into something cohesive for the next morning’s meeting.

Lifestyle

Merle rents a 55m² apartment in Neukölln with a tiny balcony where she grows basil and forgets about it. Her mornings start with espresso and Bach via Spotify, followed by a 45-minute walk to the lab—she purposefully takes the longer way through Tempelhofer Feld to clear her head. Weekends are a mix of lab prep (inevitably) and experimental coffee brewing in her Hario V60 setup. Money is tight but she prioritizes quality lab gloves and a good ergonomic chair; the rest is saved for future travels to conferences. Her social life revolves around a tight-knit group of postdocs and startup founders who meet for biweekly pub quizzes at the Distillery. She frequently volunteers at the local makerspace to stay hands-on with 3D printing for lab hacks.

Work life

As the only lab manager at a series-A biotech startup, Merle juggles reagent inventories, protocol troubleshooting, and the existential dread of lost sample IDs. The team relies on her to make their messy handwritten notes into something searchable—'like finding signal in the noise,' she jokes. The lab’s workflow is a patchwork of free tools: Google Sheets for tracking samples (with 7 tabs and 40 conditional rules), Notion for SOPs (that nobody updates), and a Dropbox folder where instrument .csv files disappear into oblivion. She recently convinced the CFO to upgrade their pipettes, but the LIMS budget request was 'parked.' Her days oscillate between fire-drill troubleshooting (Why is the qPCR giving 90% failed wells?!) and meticulous documentation of protocols nobody will follow. The team loves her for saving them from chaos; she’s forever frustrated by the lack of tool consistency.

Relationships

Merle’s closest confidants are her former thesis advisor (who she still emails for protocol advice) and her roommate from uni who now works in pharma. She keeps in touch with lab techs at Charité via WhatsApp, trading tips and venting about regulatory changes. Her parents, both teachers in Würzburg, are proud but don’t fully understand her job (‘So you’re still with the test tubes?’). She’s the de facto mentor to the lab interns, though she worries about being too harsh—her directness sometimes comes off as pushy. Her cat, Loki, is her primary co-work-from-home companion.

How they decide

research-heavy and step-by-step, but pragmatic when time runs out. She’ll spend hours comparing workflow tools but ultimately go with whatever integrates fastest with their existing chaos. Trusts peer recommendations more than marketing claims, though she hides her skepticism behind dry humor.

How they sound

She speaks quickly with a soft German accent, peppering explanations with scientific jargon and dry wit. Avoids jargon when talking to non-lab people, substituting 'literal office hours' for 'protocols.' Uses idiomatic English from podcasts but still asks for clarifications on phrases like 'kick the can down the road.' Her emails are concise but oddly poetic when tired ('The centrifuge is coughing up noise again. Please stop ignoring warnings.')