Manuel Snyder, MSc

In the Spring of 2000, during his freshman year, Manuel Snyder started working at the University of Arizona Cancer Center (UACC) as a student lab technician. He worked briefly in Garth Powis's lab and then in Dave Alberts's Cancer Prevention and Control Lab (CPC Lab)

After graduating in 2003, Manuel was hired as a research technician in the CPC Lab, where he assisted with the lab's histological tasks (e.g., cutting slides, staining slides, designing data entry forms and CRFs, writing and developing SOPs, etc.). He also built multiple databases for the CPC Lab, as well as a biospecimen management application to track all of the biospecimens that the CPC Lab received; especially for the Selenium-Celecoxib (SEL-CEL) clinical trial, a nationwide study that had multiple collection sites across the country and consisted of almost a half million biospecimens. 

Manuel eventually became the Coordinator for Biorepository Informatics and helped vet a biospecimen management application, called TissueMetrix, which was adopted by the Cancer Center in 2009 and was used by multiple groups in the Cancer Center and UAHS. Manuel was the sole administrator for TissueMetrix since its implementation. At its peak, TissueMetrix had data on almost 20,000 participants, and almost 300,000 biospecimens from over thirty biobanks.

During this time, Manuel also developed multiple barcode labeling systems for the lab's biospecimens, freezer logs, histology slides, and documents. The document labeling system was used for high-throughput document scanning, allowing for automatic folder creation and electronic organization of clinical trial documents and CRFs for the Selenium clinical trial. 

While working full-time at the university, and part-time for a local biotech company, Manuel earned his master’s degree in Computer Science in 2012.

Manuel became a member of CB2 in late 2014 and became the Associate Director of Electronic Data Capture in 2023. As a part of CB2, he continued to be the administrator of TissueMetrix until 2023, when it was replaced with OpenSpecimen, another biospecimen management system that he was responsible for vetting. He coordinated the OpenSpecimen implementation and training, and was also responsible for mapping and migrating all of the existing data from TissueMetrix. This undertaking was completed with immense help of the OpenSpecimen support team and members of the UAHS Biorepository.

During his time with CB2, he has been an integral part of CB2's REDCap team by helping build projects and providing user support. He is also responsible for creating demos for the REDZone (CB2's weekly REDCap support meeting), editing and producing the REDZone videos, and uploading them to the CB2 REDCap YouTube site.

Additionally, because of his artistic and graphic design background, he is in charge of designing and maintaining CB2's official website, the CB2 YouTube channel, and the CB2 OpenSpecimen YouTube channel. Manuel also helps with other graphic design tasks, like creating Zoom backgrounds, designing name plates, and creating presentation templates and informational/promotional materials for CB2.

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