NIR News | 2019
Pittcon 2019 Report – Pittcon celebrated its seventh decade at Philadelphia
Abstract
The 70th annual Pittcon Conference and Expo was held at the Pennsylvania Convention Center from 17 to 21 March (https://pittcon.org/pittcon-2019/). The convention this year marks a number of milestones, with the number of attendees increasing to over 12,500 participants. Pittcon is the world’s biggest conference and expo in analytical chemistry and applied spectroscopy: it covers almost all fields in analytical chemistry including chromatography, mass spectrometry, electroanalytical chemistry, sensors, microfluidics, plasmonics in analytical chemistry, etc. In addition, techniques in applied spectroscopy focuses on infrared (IR), near infrared (NIR), Raman, ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis), and fluorescence spectroscopy with popular applications in the fields of biomedical and clinical sciences; applications in other fields including nanoscience and technology, pharmaceutical science and engineering, process analysis, food and agricultural engineering including food safety, environmental science, and forensic science also garnered significant attention. This year, Nobel Prize Laureate Professor Fraser Stoddart held the Wallace Coulter Lecture titled, ‘‘Serendipity Stokes Discovery: Disrupting Established Industries,’’ and Dr. Fenella France held the Plenary Lecture, ‘‘Preserving and Revealing History – Challenges of a Cultural Heritage Scientist’’; both lectures were enthusiastically received by full-house audiences. Beyond the keynote lectures, Pittcon offered award symposiums, organized contribution sessions, oral sessions, workshops, poster sessions, and short courses, allowing participants a chance to engage in numerous state-of-the-art presentations. This year, 713 companies from around the world had booths at the Pittcon Expo, including 40 newcomers. The booths displayed topics ranging from computer software to lab equipment custom manufactures, with several companies also hosting Exhibitor Seminars. Beyond the functional discussions, events such as the St. Patrick’s Day Welcome Reception & Poster Session and Pub Pittcon ‘‘Happy Hour’’ allowed participants a chance to unwind from the bustling activity, with the pub alone attracting over 400 people every night with live music and karaoke. Each year, Pittcon presents a variety of distinguished awards for outstanding work in analytical chemistry and applied spectroscopy, including the Pittsburg Spectroscopy Award, the Pittsburg Analytical Chemistry Award, and the Pittsburg Conference Achievement Award to name a few. The Pittsburg Spectroscopy Award—presented annually to only one awardee—has a particularly prestigious history of over 60 years. The list of past recipients counts three Nobel Prize Laureates—Herzberg, Zewail, and Moerner—in addition to a host of other luminaries (Zare, Van Duyne, Pimentel, Hirschfeld, and Griffith) among its rank. This year Yuki (Yukihiro) Ozaki of Kwansei Gakuin University in Japan received this esteemed award for his long-term contributions tomolecular spectroscopy, particularly inNIR,Ramanand far-ultraviolet spectroscopy. His pioneering work in the field includes studies of basic principles, instruments developments, proposals of spectral analysis methods, and applications to various other fields. The photo shows Yuki Ozaki, with Dr. Neal Dando, chair of the award committee for the Spectroscopy Society of Pittsburgh, and Dr. Don Antczak, the chairman of the Spectroscopy Society of Pittsburgh at the award ceremony (figure 1). Well deserved, Yuki! News of this award was reported by several journals and magazines including Angewandte (Angew Chem Int Ed, 2019, 58, 1–3). Pittcon 2020 will be held at Chicago from 1 to 5 March 2020.