Sixty Years of Pittcon - Pittcon celebrates 60 years of service to the scientific community and remains an unmissable event in the analytical chemistry calendar.

Sixty Years of Pittcon - Pittcon celebrates 60 years of service to the scientific community and remains an unmissable event in the analytical chemistry calendar. - Chromatography Online

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Sixty Years of Pittcon

Pittcon celebrates 60 years of service to the scientific community and remains an unmissable event in the analytical chemistry calendar.

Mar 1, 2009
LCGC Europe
Volume 22, Issue 3

Pittcon 2009 will be held from March 8–13, 2009, at McCormick Place South, in Chicago, Illinois, USA. Pittcon is the most comprehensive annual meeting on laboratory science in the world, offering a first-class laboratory product exposition, a diverse, high-quality technical programme, a series of in-depth educational programmes and invaluable peer-to-peer networking opportunities.

Pittcon typically attracts an international audience with conferees, speakers and exhibitors from more than 100 countries. With its central location and close proximity to O'Hare International Airport, Pittcon 2009 provides easy access for international visitors and is expected to welcome more than 2800 attendees from outside of North America.

Instrumentation and applications in all phases of chromatography will be well represented in the technical programme and exposition. There will be more than 800 technical sessions and posters covering traditional chromatography — HPLC, UPLC, UHPLC, IC, GC, GPC, SFC, TLC, HPTLC — as well as many new hyphenated chromatography techniques, including LC–MS–MS, GC–MS, UPLC–MS–MS, HPLC–HRGC–MS, LC–MS–LTQ-Orbitrap, ECD–HPLC, CE–MS, HILIC–LCMS–IT–TOF, LC ICP–MS, LC–TOF–MS and SPE–LC–MS–MS.

Educational Opportunities in Chromatography

Pittcon 2009 will provide a valuable opportunity to learn, exchange ideas and see what's new in the world of chromatography and general laboratory science. There will be an amazing array of educational opportunities through new product forums and an extensive technical programme, consisting of poster sessions, invited symposia, contributed oral presentations, award symposia and conferee networking sessions. There will be an array of short courses dedicated to chromatography techniques and applications, including:

Hydrophobic Interaction Chromatography — the Other Side of Reversed Phase HPLC
Basic HPLC: Fundamentals, Applications and Troubleshooting
Practical Gas Chromatography: Packed and Capillary Columns
Designing Gas Delivery Systems for Optimal Performance for Gas Chromatography Applications
Supercritical Fluid Chromatography in the Pharmaceutical Industry
Basic HPLC Method Development
The Possibilities of GC–MS in the Analysis of a Huge Number of Compounds from One Solution by a Single Injection: Waste, River, Drinking Waters, Plants, Fruits, Vegetables, Honeys, etc.
LC–MS Strategies for the Identification of Impurities, Degradants and Metabolites.

The Life Sciences and "Omics" Research

The rapid advances in "omics" research — genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, glycomics — in the past decade are, in part, being driven by new developments in liquid chromatography (LC) instrumentation, capillary electrophoresis (CE) and other separation methods coupled with various types of mass spectrometry (MS) detection as well as sophisticated bioinformatics strategies.

With its ability to rapidly identify large numbers of biochemicals in complex mixtures, MS has emerged as the preferred method for in-depth characterization of protein components in biological systems. Advances in bioinformatics, cellular databases and techniques to manage the large amounts of data generated by MS analyses have given researchers additional tools to significantly speed up their "omics" research.

At Pittcon 2009, all of these technologies will be on display and researchers from academia and industry will present the latest "omics" applications using these sophisticated instruments and software. Here are just a few of the highlights:

Driving Biological Discovery using Advanced Mass Spectrometry
Beyond Protein Identification, Making Sense of Proteomic Data
Quality Instead of Quantity: Simplifying Top Down and Middle Down Protein Identification by Recording High-Resolution Tandem Mass Spectra on a High Throughput Basis
Ultrahigh Mass Resolution and Mass Accuracy: What's Possible, What's Not and What It's Good For
"In Vitro" Metabolite Identification Using High Resolution LC–MS, LC–MSⁿ and Online H/D Exchange Methodologies
Recent Advances in Glycomic Quantification: Profiling at High Sensitivity
Pushing the Performance Boundaries of LC–MS–MS Bioanalysis: On the Edge of Reason

ACS Division of Analytical Chemistry Programme

The American Chemical Society Division of Analytical Chemistry (ACS DAC) will once again co-programme with Pittcon and are presenting five invited symposia among other technical sessions and posters:

Biological Applications of Capillary Electrophoresis
Evolution of Modern Chromatography: Celebration of 25 Years of the Subdivision of Chromatography and Separation Chemistry
New Dimensions in Multidimensional Separations
Pressurized Fluids in Analytical Separations Technology
The Future of HPLC-Method Development: Quality by Design — Evaluating the Control Space of Robust HPLC Methods

Plenary Lecture and Pittcon Heritage Award

The Pittcon 2009 Sunday programme will be highlighted by George M. Whitesides, the Woodford L. and Ann A. Flowers University Professor at the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Harvard University. Dr. Whitesides will deliver the plenary lecture on Paper Diagnostics — Using First World Science in Developing Economies. The lecture will focus on two exciting new technologies: microfluidic systems based on patterned paper and microanalytical systems using magnetic levitation. Prior to the Plenary Lecture, the prestigious Pittcon Heritage Award will be presented to Alfred R. Bader, Founder of Aldrich Chemical Company (now Sigma-Aldrich) for his outstanding contributions to the scientific community.

Awards for Technical Achievements

Among the many prestigious scientific awards presented at Pittcon 2009 will be the Bomen-Michelson award, which will be presented to Professor Martin Quack of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zürich, for his contributions in vibrational, molecular, Raman and electronic spectroscopy. The 2009 Dal Nogare Award recipient for excellence in chromatography will be Dr. Frantisek Svec, the facility director of the Molecular Foundry at the E.O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Product Exposition

On the exposition floor, conferees will have the unique opportunity to visit more than 1 000 exhibitors and see first hand the latest developments in chromatography instrumentation, columns and supplies. They will be able to speak with experts involved in a variety of applications in life science, pharmaceutical science, environmental science, food science and more. Recognized government policy makers will also be on hand to discuss the latest government regulations and guidelines.

New Product Forums

Some of the latest developments in scientific instrumentation and equipment can be seen in the New Product Forums, which will be held throughout the day from Monday–Wednesday. A few of the products to be presented include:

Centrifugal SFC Fraction Collector and Simultaneous Sample Concentration System
Disposable Bioreactor
Man-Portable GC–MS System for Detection and Identification of Semi-Volatile and Volatile Organic Compounds
Ultra Inert Capillary GC Columns
Scalable Modular HPLC System
High-Resolution Hybrid Mass Spectrometer with Electron Capture Dissociation (ECD)
Elemental Analyser
Automated Methyl-Mercury Analyzer using Gas-Chromatography and Cold Vapor Atomic Fluorescence Spectrometry
Particle Size Analysers using Microscopy Techniques
Fast, Highly Sensitive FTIR-Based Analyzer for CWA & TIC Monitoring
Fast Scan Differential Scanning Calorimeters
Fully Configurable Sample Prep System for SPE, GPC Cleanup and Concentration
Automatic Dynamic Headspace for the Determination of Volatile Organic Compounds in Different Matrices
Chromatography Software