Throughout the year, Life Technologies employees are empowered to identify and participate in opportunities to donate their time and talents in ways that are meaningful to them and that further the understanding, appreciation, and application of the life sciences.

In 2009, the web portal Giving Back at Life was launched to help employees find these opportunities and log volunteer hours to earn rewards. In 2010, Giving Back at Life is now tracked via AngelPoints, a program that allows companies around the world to manage and measure their community involvement initiatives and recognize and reward their volunteers. AngelPoints provides new ways of measuring and quantifying our impact, and helps Life Technologies ensure that our community relations activities are appropriately aligned with our collective goals and objectives.

Highlights from 2009 include:

• Donating human identification kits to help identify victims of a bush fire in Australia.
• Hosting 80 girls in a science laboratory in Austin, Texas, and introducing them to the world of forensics by extracting DNA from their cheek cells, running the DNA on gels, and performing fingerprinting and analysis.
• Giving personal time. Scientist Tatiana Cirico went to Mexico to assist in a hands-on biology course for underserved youth, while scientist John Pfeifer spent his vacation time developing and teaching a PCR course for gifted students in Houston, Texas.
• Co-sponsoring the launch of the Milwaukee School of Engineering Science Olympiad Protein Modeling Trial event in Madison, Wisconsin.
• Donating to the Camarillo, California school district’s library system for science-related books and audio/visual materials targeted at 4th through 6th graders