Medical Laboratory Science Program - Mayo Clinic

Congratulations to our MLS faculty member, Kasey K***r, on receiving the 2026 DLMP Innovation and Leadership Award in Education! Her innovative approach to the Blood Bank curriculum, highlighted by the development of a “Blood Bank Escape Room,” has transformed student learning, creating a more practical, interactive, and memorable classroom experience.

We are proud to celebrate our MLS faculty member, Lori Duresko, who has been named the 2026 Outstanding Educator for the Mayo Clinic School of Health Sciences! Lori has dedicated her time and expertise to teaching Bacteriology in the lab and clinical environment to all 18 of our MLS classes—what an incredible achievement!

Congratulations to the Medical Laboratory Science Class of 2026! We wish you the best of luck in all your future aspirations!

Our MLS Transfusion Group 3 students took on the challenge of the Hemo‑Goblin 3.0 Escape Room this week! Both teams escaped in under 1½ hours—great teamwork and problem‑solving!

MLS student Britney spent this week in the Clinical Mass Spectrometry Laboratory (CMSL) as part of her chemistry elective rotation. She is shown covering and inspecting a 96‑DW plate to ensure well uniformity— the final extraction steps before samples are run on the mass spectrometer. During her time in CMSL, she learned about dialysis extraction, one of several methods used to prepare patient samples for mass spectrometry analysis.

This week, MLS student Rhiannon kicked off her final clinical rotation in the Bacteriology Laboratory. She is shown performing MALDI-TOF analysis for organism identification.

MLS student Zhu Lan spent time rotating through the Special Coagulation Laboratory last week, gaining hands-on experience with the lab’s von Willebrand multimer bench. This testing, along with other laboratory data, plays a key role in identifying the various types of von Willebrand disease.

MLS student A***n is currently completing his Clinical Chemistry rotation in the Clinical Core Laboratory Services area. He has been performing pre‑analytical processing for chemistry testing, including pouring samples into instrument‑ready tubes, removing clots, relabeling specimens needing new barcodes, adding Reptilase to viscous samples, and preparing drug filtrates for centrifugation. He also assisted with troubleshooting on the DXI analyzer, which performs immunoassay testing for Vitamin B12, Folate, Troponin, and Thyroid Stimulating Hormone (TSH). Additionally, A***n pipetted samples onto an applicator for gel electrophoresis, where HDL, LDL, and Lp(a) are separated for analysis.

MLS student Syndey spent time this week learning in the Metabolic Hematology Laboratory. She gained hands‑on experience preparing washed packed red cells for sickle solubility testing, including washing whole blood with saline, centrifugation, and aspirating the supernatant. She also practiced pipetting buffer and interpreting test tubes to assess for the presence of Hemoglobin S.

Our first cohort of blood bank students returned to the Stabile 3-50 teaching lab this week to put their blood bank knowledge retention to the test. Congratulations for being the first team to escape the Hemo-Goblin 3.0 Attack on the Blood Bank in under one hour! The official escape time was 58:30. We are incredibly impressed by your teamwork, communication, riddle-solving skills, and strong recall of Immunohematology concepts. Well done!