Pittcon Celebrates 70th Birthday With Awards for Significant Achievement

Over seven decades, Pittcon has provided a forum for communicating advances in chemical metrology. The series started as the Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy, with the first meetings held in a hotel in Pittsburgh, PA. The meeting quickly outgrew the hotels then available in Pittsburgh, which led to the current wandering itinerary of locations. Although it is still organized by staff from the Pittsburgh Section of the American Chemical Society, management recently dropped the old name in favor of “Pittcon Conference and Exposition.” I’ve been attending for 52 years, missing one along the way. This experience base allows me to observe and comment on the ebb and flow of technology and careers.

Let’s start with the new products.

For about the first 60 years of Pittcon, the meeting was the global target date for product introductions. New products had to be ready for Pittcon. This led to introduction of several new products that never shipped. Software was referred to as “vaporware.” Over the last 20 years, introductions at Pittcon have slowly shifted to vertical meetings such as ASMS, HPLC, Gulf Coast Conference, and SciX. Unfortunately, some major vendors joined the verticalization and no longer participate in Pittcon. However, Pittcon is still a great place to see new products, especially items that bridge multiple silos. The large technical program is also a major draw.

Pittcon Today Excellence Awards

This year, Pittcon Today organized a competition for the three best new products. A jury of industry experts evaluated the products and ranked the top three in three levels. The levels were determined by annual sales of the developer.

Level: less than $10,000,000

Gate Scientific wins Gold again

Last year, Gate Scientific won a gold award for the smartSENSE pH Sensing Stirbar. This novel RFID-enabled system provides real-time, direct reading of the temperature in the liquid and control of the heating. The plate transmits results via Wi-Fi to computer and onto the cloud. The buzz on the floor was that the smartSENSE was a great example of the emerging Internet of Things (IoT).

In 2019, Gate earned another Gold for extending the temperature reporting/control to include pH by adding a pH-sensitive element with a reference electrode to the stirbar. This facilitates preparation of buffers and mobile phases for chromatography and other pH-sensitive purposes. I can see the future laboratory with a series of smart workstations set up for continuous, cloud-based smart monitoring of reagents, reactions, titrations, and products.

Lumex snares Silver

Lumex Instruments garnered a silver award for the AriaDNA real-time PCR analyzer. Using a small microchip, the instrument can complete 45 PCR cycles in 20 minutes, allowing it to detect as few as 1–5 copies per microreactor. The key enabling technology is the rapid heating rate (10–12 °C/sec) enabled by the microchip. The small chip also reduces sample volume to 0.5–1.8 µL. A chip holds 20 or 40 microreactors. The reactors also minimize risk of cross-contamination of samples. The AriaDNA is supported by diagnostic kits for sexually transmitted diseases, food origin and manufacturing, biological safety, and identification of viruses and bacteria.

Pendar takes home Bronze

Pendar Technologies is a developer of optical instrumentation using technology developed and licensed from Harvard University. New Quantum Cascade Laser Arrays provide high-power illumination and high-resolution detection in the Raman mode, which facilitated the Pendar X10. Pendar’s website explains: “Our mission is to create intelligent chemistry systems. We fuse innovative hardware with machine learning algorithms guided by expert knowledge of molecular spectroscopy.” The X10 offers a handheld Raman instrument designed to identify materials with a standoff distance up to one meter.

Level: $10–$100,00,000

Raptor Photonics collects Gold

Raptor Photonics is a global developer of high-performance digital cameras for high-definition images. At Pittcon, Raptor introduced the OWL 1280 VIS-SWIR (InGaAS) HD format camera. The spectral range is 400–1700 nm with 10 × 10 µm pixel pitch for high-resolution imaging with low light. Intrascene dynamic range is 70 dB, which should facilitate the imaging of bright and dim objects.

Tosoh takes home Silver

Tosoh Bioscience is part of a Japanese firm that has more than 50 years of experience with HPLC, especially steric exclusion chromatography of synthetic and biopolymers. HPLC column technology and enabled applications has been the key driver of the company, including instrumentation. Over 30 years ago, Tosoh introduced the NPR (Non-Porous Resins) series of column packings. These particles have a chromatographically active surface chemistry bonded to a 2.5-µm-diameter methacrylate nonporous core. The NPR series is ideal for analytical-scale separation of large molecules since the diffusion distance between stationary and mobile phase is very short and big molecules move relatively slowly.

This year, Tosoh earned a Silver Award for introduction of the TSKgel FcR-IIIA-NPR Affinity HPLC column. The column packing is optimized for the separation of glycoforms of antibodies. Antibodies conjugated to drugs (aka drug–antibody conjugates) are the most common drug candidates in the approval pipeline. This column uses glyco-bio-affinity chromatography to provide high-resolution analytical separations.

Metrohm medals, receiving Bronze Award

Even after 80+ years, since Karl Fischer invented the water assay, the titrator is still winning awards. Case in point: Metrohm introduced the OMNIS Karl Fischer titrator at Pittcon. It was awarded the Bronze. The OMNIS is four times faster than prior models, plus the modular design facilitates expansion, depending upon sample load.

The OMNIS is a versatile titrator. Metrohm offers protocols and packaged reagents for analysis of beverages for Vitamin C, total acidity, and more. The reagent containers snap into place, where an RFID tag confirms identity and use-by date. This reduces the risk of contact for the operator while automatically transferring key data to the OMNIS software and ultimately a host computer. Metrohm calls this 3S Technology for Safe, Secure and Smart.

Level: more than $100,000,000

Gold Award for Shimadzu

Shimadzu introduced several new instruments for chromatography, including the Hemp Analyzer and a new line of HPLC instruments. The Nexera UC preparative supercritical fluid chromatograph won a Gold Award. This SFC is designed to facilitate lab-scale preparative separations in pharmaceutical laboratories. Preparative SFC is ideal for separation of smaller molecules (<10,000 Da), including chiral separations. It is usually higher capacity and faster than HPLC.

Shimadzu has developed a unique gas–liquid separator to collect the purified sample. Until now, preparative SFCs have had trouble with sample collection, since the expansion of CO2 would carry along the sample components, sometimes into the laboratory, leading to health and safety concerns, not to mention reduced yield. This is a significant advance in prep SFC.

Phenomenex Silvers

Phenomenex won a Silver Award for the Zebron ZB-624PLUS GC Column. The “plus” in the name is the key word for new, more inert surface chemistry that extends the operating range to 300/320 °C. The chromatographically active groups are of moderate polarity, so the column is suitable for both polar and nonpolar analytes, especially high-boiling-point solvents.

Bruker AXS wins Bronze

Smaller is usually better, especially in the laboratory. Despite its small footprint, Bruker’s new S6 JAGUAR benchtop WDXRF provides powerful 400-W 50-kV performance, which is useful for heavier elements. Light elements are measured with lower power. Four analyzer crystals are available. Sample throughput is doubled. Linear range is up to 2 million counts. X-ray optics have been designed to reduce background counts, thus improving detection limits.

The people factor

Instruments and enabled applications are interesting factors in the business, but science is a uniquely human endeavor. So, let’s focus on the leaders who spent a large fraction of their lives making the business work and thus played an important role in growing our science-based society. I’ve heard Mike McMullen (president of Agilent Technologies) challenge market analysts: “I defy you to point to a commercial product that is not touched and supported by results from gas chromatography.” Of course, Agilent is the global leader in gas chromatography.

The Wallace H. Coulter Lecture given by Sir Fraser Stoddart was Pittcon’s opening keynote lecture. Entitled, “Serendipity Stokes Discovery: Disrupting Established Industries,” the presentation led into reports on Professor Stoddart’s Nobel Prize-winning work on supramolecular and self-assembling complexes. Large, stable complexes have been known for decades, but examples are rare. Recently, however, interest in the field has exploded due to a series of significant, often serendipitous discoveries, including zeolite-like metal organic structures and self-assembling cyclodextrin structures. The latter offer the possibility of replacing cyanide gold extraction with lower-cost and more environmentally benign cyclodextrin gold complexes.

Pittcon Heritage Award

For several decades now, the Science History Institute has presented Heritage Awards to business leaders who were successful in building metrology businesses. Some made instruments, while others focused on suppling consumables, chemicals, and standards that are essential for success in the laboratory.

This year, the jury selected Walter Supina and Nicholas Pelick, who worked as partners to build Supelco into a major vendor of chromatography accessories, including GC and HPLC columns. Unfortunately, both Walter and Nicholas passed away in 2018. The awards were accepted by Pelick’s Daughter, Darina, and Supina’s son, Richard, during a ceremony on Monday afternoon. Their parents had already sold Supelco to Rohm and Haas in the mid-1980s. A few years ago, Supelco was acquired by Merck KGaA.

Separation science

In the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, Pittcon was dominated by advances in separation science, particularly chromatography. I recall eagerly awaiting the meeting and the new products and applications. Professional friendships were formed that endure to this day.

Milos Novotny honored for lifetime achievement

My old friend, Professor Milos V. Novotny, received a Lifetime Achievement Award in Chromatography sponsored by LC∙GC. Over at least five decades, Professor Novotny has led the development of LC instruments and applications. One of his earliest endeavors was in pheromones of animals. Later, he moved on to capillary chromatography, which enabled LC/MS. Along the way, he applied the advances in instrumentation to applications such as cancer research. The other work product is an army of dedicated Ph.D.’s and post-docs.

Professor Peter Shoenmakers wins Dal Nogare Award

The Dal Nogare Award honors scientists who make a significant contribution to advancing chromatography. It is organized by the Chromatography Forum of the Delaware Valley.

Professor Peter Shoenmakers is a noted chromatographer who made a successful transition from industry to academia early in his career. With this background, his lectures usually apply cutting-edge technology to practical problems in chemical separations. Multidimensional liquid chromatography is a recent example.

Ken Broeckhoven recognized as Emerging Leader in Chromatography

Scientists working in the academic world fight for recognition of their work. This helps with competing for grants, where the established leaders, usually full professors, have a definite advantage. Associate Professor Ken Broeckhoven of Vrije University in Brussels was awarded the Emerging Leader Award for his research on optimizing performance of HPLC and SFC.

Spectroscopy

Pittcon’s prior name was the Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy. Hence, it is appropriate that spectroscopists are also honored for their critical work in advancing spectroscopy.

Professor Yukihiro Ozaki receives Pittsburgh Spectroscopy Award

Professor Yukihiro Ozaki of Kwansei Gaukuin University in Nishinomiya, Japan, was honored for his four decades of work advancing Raman, IR, NIR, far-UV, and terahertz spectroscopy.

Coblentz Society honors Professor Wolfgang Petrich

The Coblentz Society promotes the advancement of molecular vibrational spectroscopy (IR + Raman). This year, Professor Wolfgang Petrich of Heidelberg University in Germany was recognized for his work in developing biomedical optics.

Pittcon presents Spectroscopy Achievement Award to Professor Wei Min

Professor Wei Min of Columbia University in New York won the Pittsburgh Conference Achievement Award for his work in imaging biological materials with Raman and IR absorption spectroscopy.

Electrochemistry

Professor Weihong Tan receives Ralph N. Adams Award, Pittsburgh Analytical Chemistry Award

Professor Weihong Tan of the University of Florida in Gainesville and Hunan University in China was busy at Pittcon, winning the two awards listed above. The Adams Award is in memory of Professor Adams, a noted electroanalytical biochemist who showed that the left and right sections of the human brain are different in structure and activity. He also demonstrated the existence of free radicals in healthy and ill humans. Professor Tan is following along the trail of Adams, with research program involving biomolecular probes.

Metrology

Metrology lectureship award presented to Professors Charles Henry, Ester Segal, and Chunhai Fan

The Advances in Measurement Science Lectureship Award was presented to Professors Charles S. Henry (Colorado State University, Fort Collins), Ester H. Segal (Technion-Israel institute of Technology), and Chunghai Fan (Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility [SSRF]) for their outstanding work in communicating measurement science.

Royce W. Murray Award to Dr. Alex Martinson

Dr. Alex Martinson’s research at Argonne National Laboratory focuses on nanosensors, including novel designs for optoelectronics, especially at surfaces of nanomaterials. This is a fitting award, since Professor Murray worked on nanosensors decades before.

Metrohm honors Jeffrey Lopez for 7th Annual Young Chemist Award

Metrohm is a leader in several segments of analytical chemistry. Six years ago, Metrohm initiated an annual award to recognize interesting work by a young investigator, usually a graduate student or post-doc. This year, Jeffery Lopez, currently at MIT in Cambridge, was selected for his work developing lithium metal batteries. When perfected, these batteries may offer the power density of common fuels.

Summary

All in all, Pittcon 2019 was another significant event marking the advancement of metrology. It takes scientists and vendors to propel the field forward. As problems are solved and made easier to execute, our society is clearly benefitting.

Robert L. Stevenson, Ph.D., is Editor Emeritus, American Laboratory/Labcompare; e-mail: [email protected]