2024 EAS Awardees Showcase Innovative Research in Analytical Science

On November 19, the 2024 Eastern Analytical Symposium (EAS) honored six leading scientists at the Crowne Plaza Princeton Conference Center in Plainsboro, New Jersey. This year’s awardees presented on their work, with three scientists showcasing advancements in separation science techniques.

Ariel Furst, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and recipient of the 2024 EAS Young Investigator Award, opened the session by presenting her work on bio-inspired technologies for human and environmental health monitoring. Furst’s research combines chemistry with the natural activity of biomolecules and microbes to advance traditional health-monitoring methods. Her team has developed low-cost sensors capable of detecting viral infections by harnessing biomolecular activity. In a separate project, they used synthetic biology to engineer microbes that not only detect but also degrade harmful environmental pollutants.

Furst completed her Ph.D. at Caltech developing non-invasive diagnostics for colorectal cancer. She was also a A. O. Beckman Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, where she developed sensors to monitor environmental pollutants. She is a 2023 National Institutes of Health (NIH) New Innovator Awardee, a 2023 Marion Milligan Mason Awardee, a CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar for Bio-Inspired Solar Energy, and an ARO Early Career Grantee.

Following Furst’s presentation, Nelu Grinberg, the winner of the 2024 EAS Award for Outstanding Achievements in Separation Science, took the stage. Grinberg, who is now retired, spent his career working in the pharmaceutical industry, for companies including Merck and Boehringer Ingelheim. Grinberg has authored and co-authored more than 160 publications, including articles and book chapters, and has lectured and conducted courses around the world.

Nelu Grinberg, the winner of the 2024 EAS Award for Outstanding Achievements in Separation Science, speaking at the Eastern Analytical Symposium.

Grinberg spoke about vibrational circular dichroism (VCD) spectroscopy for the determination of supramolecular interactions in enantiomeric separations. VCD is a vibrational spectroscopic technique that measures the difference in absorbance of left- and right-circularly polarized light by a molecule undergoing a vibrational transition in the infrared region. Developed in the 1970s, VCD has since been applied to study the structure of chiral molecules, providing unique insights into their stereochemistry and conformational behavior.

Later in the session, Benjamin Garcia, a professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine, took the stage to present his work in mass spectrometry (MS). Garcia was honored with the 2024 EAS Award for Outstanding Achievements in MS. Garcia earned his BS in Chemistry from the University of California, Davis in 2000, conducting undergraduate research in Carlito Lebrilla’s lab. He completed his Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of Virginia in 2005 under Donald Hunt, followed by an NIH NRSA Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Illinois with Neil Kelleher. He then joined Princeton University as an Assistant Professor in Molecular Biology before moving to the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, where he became a full professor and the John McCrea Dickson M.D. Presidential Professor in 2017. In 2021, Garcia joined Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis as the Raymond H. Wittcoff Distinguished Professor and Head of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics.

He provided an overview of his work on technological advancements enabling high-throughput quantitative mass spectrometry analysis of histone post-translational modification (PTM) sites. This work leverages rapid-scanning mass spectrometry instrumentation to analyze histones—small proteins that package DNA into chromosomes. Notably, studies have linked specific post-translational modification (PTM) sites on histones to gene activation and silencing, highlighting their critical role in gene regulation.

Garcia also discussed his team’s innovative approaches to intact protein analysis. To accelerate the discovery of new modifications, they developed data-independent acquisition mass spectrometry (DIA-MS) methods, which have advanced the quantification of glycans and RNA, paving the way for deeper insights into cellular processes.