Next week, I will be traveling to Philadelphia for the PITTCON Conference. I will be meeting another Chemistry Matters colleague, Michelle Misselwitz there as well. It is not so far to travel for Michelle as she is a resident of Pennsylvania but I will be spending some ever important focus time on a couple of plane rides in order to get there. The importance of Chemistry Matters Inc's attendance cannot be understated as it allows us to stay on the leading edge of science and contribute to science with our own presentations. See my recent blog for other reasons for attending these international conferences.
PITTCON 2019
PITTCON is a very large analytical chemistry conference. Attendance is recommended "Anyone who identifies, quantifies, analyzes or tests the chemical or biological properties of compounds or molecules, or who manages these laboratory scientists." So, naturally, Chemistry Matters is interested. I first attended Pittcon in 2001 in New Orleans which I remember was one heck of a conference (and location for a conference). The scientific program looks amazing once again this year.
My current work involves lots of new techniques for analytical separation and detection of chemicals. One of the most important for us is two-dimensional gas chromatography coupled with time of flight mass spectrometry (2DGC-TOFMS). At the conference we will be able to visit with the instrument manufacturers of these and related technologies and get the latest information on what is coming. In addition, there will be many presentations on a variety of analytical techniques used for chemical monitoring in the environment and the latest innovations. What better way to stay current in the knowledge and possibilities that are available.
Presentations by Chemistry Matters at Pittcon
I will also be presenting at the conference. My talk "Fixing False Negatives, Using 2DGC-TOFMS to Correctly Identify Ignitable Liquid Residues (ILRs) in Wildfire Investigations" will happen on Monday. This talk will cover Chemistry Matters Inc.'s work on using this technique to identify ILRs in difficult matrices where the routine methods and standard methods are not able to do so.
Michelle Misselwitz is presenting on Wednesday and her talk is "Analytical Chemistry Lessons from History: The Discovery of PCBs and the Future of Analytical Methods for Environmental Contaminants". The presentation will look at what the past can teach us about future analytical methods.
We are looking forward to seeing familiar faces at the conference this year. We hope to learn about new techniques and new ideas to implement in our work back home.
