Time is everything for any person, business, or industry, but it is especially crucial for scientific research. Laboratories are complex environments where experiments rely on precise scheduling, yet managing equipment availability has long been a persistent challenge. Researchers often face schedule clashes, and lab managers struggle to identify underutilised resources and lack real-time insights into lab operations. This inefficiency can slow down discoveries, waste valuable resources, and increase costs.
That is why Clustermarket, a London-based software company, has transformed lab scheduling and management. Founded in 2015 by visionaries Johannes Solzbach, Niklas Friedberg, and Tobias Wingbermuehle, Clustermarket provides a specialised platform that optimises lab operations, ensuring scientists can focus on groundbreaking research instead of administrative headaches. What started as an equipment-sharing marketplace has evolved into an indispensable tool for academic and commercial laboratories worldwide.
Clustermarket's story began at a university, where the three co-founders noticed a fundamental problem with scientific equipment. Co-founder Friedberg shares, "The pieces of equipment can be expensive, and we noticed that many start-ups lacked the resources to rent equipment from nearby institutions. We realised that labs could make better use of underutilised resources."
The name Clustermarket reflects this original mission. Scientific research, especially in the life sciences in the universities, was clustered; London, Cambridge, and Oxford Universities are key hubs of innovation. By leveraging existing infrastructure, the founders hoped to democratise access to costly equipment.
However, by 2018, something unexpected happened. Universities and research institutions were using Clustermarket internally, not to rent equipment between institutions but to manage and schedule their own lab resources. It turned out that internal scheduling was a far bigger problem than external equipment sharing.
Laboratories often rely on ad hoc scheduling methods—offline spreadsheets, online calendars, whiteboards, and some even have old-school handwritten notes. Friedberg further states, "Unlike meeting rooms or general office spaces, lab equipment requires stricter booking rules, user training, and maintenance tracking."
Complementary to the above issue is the lack of accurate data on up-to-date availability. Most lab management systems do not provide insights into equipment usage, maintenance schedules, or future availability. This fragmented approach leads to scheduling conflicts, wasted time, and inefficiencies. Researchers might prepare samples for an experiment only to find the required equipment occupied. This makes forecasting capacity difficult, leading to bottlenecks and underutilised resources. Recognising this unmet need, the Clustermarket team pivoted their focus, transforming it into a lab scheduling and management platform.
Clustermarket centralises all scheduling, maintenance, and usage data into one intuitive platform. Researchers can book equipment in real time, prevent scheduling conflicts, and plan experiments more effectively. They can gain foresight into availability, track equipment maintenance, ensure resources are in optimal condition, and optimise resource allocation through analytics that can forecast future needs.
The platform's AI-powered workflow optimisation is particularly groundbreaking. Instead of manually searching for available equipment, Clustermarket's AI can automatically identify the perfect time slots, taking into account availability, maintenance schedules, and required sequencing of instruments. This helps researchers save countless hours and ensures that labs operate at peak efficiency.
Clustermarket first gained traction in the academic sector, with early adopters like University College London (UCL), King's College London, Brigham Young University, and the University of Oxford. Its success in academia led to natural expansion into the commercial sector, as scientists who had used Clustermarket in universities brought it with them into the industry.
A prime example is Lonza, a Swiss pharmaceutical giant. A former King's College researcher familiar with Clustermarket's efficiency introduced it to Lonza's Cambridge lab, demonstrating the platform's value beyond academia. Today, Clustermarket is a common name for some of the industry's biggest names.
Clustermarket's ambition is clear: to become the gold standard for lab scheduling and equipment management, expanding its reach worldwide. Its mission, as Solzbach says, is to empower scientists. "The credit belongs to the scientists. They're the ones making breakthroughs. Our job is to remove these simple yet profound barriers that slow them down. If we can help labs run more smoothly at scale, we play a small but important role in accelerating scientific progress."
Media Contact
Name: Johannes Solzbach
Email: info@clustermarket.com
