Motivation Through Recognition: Awards and Other Highlights From Pittcon 2018

Several interesting products were introduced at Pittcon 2018. Those falling under the umbrella of separation science are reviewed here. Other items of interest are highlighted below.

Data integrity and the Internet of Things

Data integrity is the key metric of the work product of the laboratory, be it research paper, chemical product, or quality assurance. However, outliers or out-of-specification results do happen—is it the sample or the method or a statistical outlier? Traceability becomes the issue, as the root cause needs to be discovered and evaluated. I was pleased to see several examples of performance monitoring and tracking devices on the floor. Generally, these seem to belong to the Internet of Things (IoT).

Eppendorf’s VisioNize system is a conspicuous step in this direction. Instruments and modules for the lab contain small two-way communication units to provide real-time control and status reporting from the module to a central VisioNize core. The core also communicates with personal communication devices like an iPhone. VisioNize was developed in cooperation from Bio-ITech, a Dutch company that develops electronic laboratory notebooks and sample tracking systems. The VisioNize core facilitates 24/7 tracking, including trends and events ranging from routine service to interruptions, to utility failures, etc. Eppendorf builds in the communication capability for the CryoCube sample stores, Mastercycler nexus PCRs, BioSpectrometer, and BioPhotometer families. With VisioNize, laboratory staff has access to the entire history of a sample or reference material, including freeze–thaw cycles.

The Dionex ICS-6000 from Thermo Fisher Scientific records as many as 16 performance metrics on the columns and instrument to help the lab adopt the IoT. It keeps track of 25 consumables and compares performance to new specifications.

Elemental Machines introduced its first round of products, which involve temperature and event monitoring in freezers, incubators, and liquid nitrogen systems.

Where is this leading? Let me direct your attention to the stirring hotplate from Gate Scientific, which won a Pittcon Today Excellence Award. An award for a stirring hotplate? Ludicrous! No, it is an example of how the IoT will make the lab safer and more productive. The founders of Gate started by rethinking the stir bar. They made a small capsule containing a neodymium magnet, dual-temperature probes, and RFID chip for communication and power. Dual-temperature sensing chips provide redundant temperature measurement. Electronics are encased in cast fluoropolymer. The stir bar is closely coupled to the liquid and reports the temperature wirelessly to the stirrer base. The base can respond by modifying the heating rate and by reporting the measurement to the lab’s Wi-Fi transceiver. An obvious improvement is that the stir bar is immersed in the liquid and avoids cumbersome umbilical probes that reside in wells that may lag events in the bulk liquid. To me, the Wireless smartSENSE Stirbar was the most game-changing new product on the floor.

Awards honoring scientists

The award session featured speakers from the early days of HPLC. Richard Henry, Ph.D., lectured on the relationship of particle pore size and sample size. This is a story of extremes. If the analyte particle is larger than the pore of the stationary phase, the analyte is excluded from the interior of the particle. If it is much smaller, it can diffuse into and back out of the particle. Diffusion can be a slow process; so modern columns often have a nonporous core to exclude small analytes from getting lost in a deep labyrinth near the center. Dr. Henry pointed out that the most efficient chromatography is usually observed when the analytes are no larger than 10% of the pore diameter. The pore cross-section area is thus about 100 times the size of the analyte. This rule of thumb is useful in explaining observed separations. However, the details of pore size and shape are difficult to obtain. Molecular size can be obtained with laser light scattering and other super-resolution imaging. People usually refer to general references based on molecular weight to estimate molecular size.

  • LC·GC Lifetime Achievement in Chromatography Award—Dr. Ron Majors. Most LC columns today are packed with some variant of his technology.
  • Pittsburgh Spectroscopy Award—Michael D. Fayer, Stanford University. Research focus: fast spectroscopic measurements.
  • Pittsburgh Analytical Chemistry Award—Xiaowei Zhuang, Harvard University. Research focus: single-molecule super-resolution imaging technology.
  • Pittsburgh Conference Achievement Award—Parastoo Hashemi, University of South Carolina. Research focus: electrochemical methods for assay of biological and environmental analytes.
  • SEAC Royce W. Murray Award—Parastoo Hashemi.
  • Advances in Measurement Science Lectureship Awards—1) Neil Kelleher, Northwestern University. Research focus: developing methods for proteomics. 2) Francesco Ricci, University of Rome. Research focus: nanosensors for bio applications. 3) Kourosh Kalantar-zadeh, RMIT. Research focus: biochemical sensors and materials science.
  • Chromatography Forum of the Delaware Valley Dal Nogare Award— Robert Kennedy, University of Michigan. Research focus: microscale bioseparations.
  • The Coblentz Society Williams-Wright Award—Charles R. Anderson, Spectral Systems, LLC. Research focus: infrared spectroscopy.
  • LC·GC Emerging Leader in Chromatography Award—Zachary Breitbach, AbbVie. Research focus: new technologies supporting drug development.
  • Satinder Ahuja Award for Young Investigators in Separation Science— Zachary Breitbach.
  • SEAC Charles N. Reilley Award—Patrick Unwin, University of Warwick. Research focus: nanoscale electrochemical imaging.
  • Ralph N. Adams Award—Chad A. Mirkin, Northwestern University. Research focus: nanotechnology.
  • Pittcon Heritage Award—Mike Morris, SpectrEcology, founder of Ocean Optics.

The Pittcon awards program helps focus attention on the most significant technical advances, be they products or workflows, and provides continuity and motivation through recognition. Congratulations to all award winners.

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

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