New Horizons in Atlanta

After a 13-year absence, Pittcon will be returning to the vibrant city of Atlanta, Georgia, USA — the entertainment and cultural centre of the southern United States. Atlanta is home to a robust food and beverage industry, one of the largest concentrations of colleges and universities in the southern United States, and the site of a rapidly expanding biotech and pharmaceutical sector. If you haven't been to Atlanta in the past three years, you haven't seen it, according to the organizing committee.

Pittcon 2011 includes a wide-array of symposia, short courses, poster sessions, networking opportunities and, of course, an exhibition featuring leading analytical and chromatography suppliers. Pittcon 2011 will be held from 13–18 March 2011 in Georgia World Congress Center, Atlanta, Gerogia, USA.

For those seeking to develop new skills or learn more about chromatographic techniques, an attractive feature of Pittcon is the informative short courses. There are about 61 short courses associated with liquid chromatography and gas chromatography. Several of these are new to Pittcon this year and include topics such as LC–MS Strategies for the Identification of Impurities, Degradants and Metabolites; LC/MS: Method Development and Applications to Small Molecules; and New Concepts of TOF-MS for Fast GC and GC×GC Applications. Pittcon short courses are offered from 12–18 March. Any individual that pays a registration fee for three short courses, receives free conference registration.

Scientific Conference

The Conference itself includes 53 invited symposia which showcase nationally and internationally recognized scientists. Some of the symposia of interest to LCGC readers include:

• Quality by Design in HPLC: The Balance Between Chromatography and Chemometrics by Loren Wrisley, Mike McBrien, Imre Molnar, Moheb Nasran and John Dolan, which will focus on the QbD steps related to chromatographic separations. It will include examples of the application of QbD, such as determining the most robust method, deciding on the best selectivity and transferring methods.

• Second Century Innovations on Chiral Separations by Daniel Armstrong, Isiah Warner, Shahab Shamsi, Gregory Webster and Bingcheng Lin, which will discuss the state-of-the art chiral separations in GC, HPLC, SFC, CE, CE–MS and microchip electrophoresis technology.

• Analysis of Pharmaceuticals Present as Water Pollutants: LC–MS Challenges and Solutions by Susan Richardson, Helene Budzinski, Brian Buckley, Rebecca Trenholm and Rebeca Pinhancos, which will discuss where and how pharmaceuticals and their metabolites/degradants enter the environment and how the newly introduced high resolution liquid chromatography, such as UHPLC, with high resolution mass spectrometers (Q-TOF and Orbitrap) and fast scanning mass spectrometers (Q-TOF and Q-TRAP) allow the detection of pharmaceuticals present at trace levels in water.

• Advances in Microscale Liquid Chromatography by Barry Karger, Stephen Weber, J Michael Ramsey, Gert Desmet and Mary Wirth, which will cover recent advances in the application, theory and instrumentation for miniaturized liquid chromatography systems including capillary, microfluidics and monolithic columns.

• New Enantiomeric Separation Approaches for the Pharmaceutical Industry by Daniel Armstrong, Christopher Welch, Antal Peter, Kyung Gahm and J.T. Lee, which will describe the newest chromatographic separation methods, including new chiral stationary phases, screening procedures, preparative separations and the separation of unusual chiral entities (such as nonprotenic amino acids).

• Implementing Ultra-high-pressure LC (UHPLC) in Pharmaceutical Analysis: Best Practices and Potential Issues presented by Michael Dong, Naijun Wu, Klaus Witt, Qinglin Tang and Taylor Zhang, which will include an overview of the fundamentals and benefits of UHPLC, its impacts on method development and sample analysis, operational nuances and pitfalls, best practice in ICH compliant impurity testing and quality control, potential issues and mitigation strategies (precision for small-volume injections, viscous heating, blending noise in high-sensitivity analysis, compatibility to conventional HPLC columns and injector issues for impurity methods).

Poster Sessions

As well as the invited symposia, there are an additional 200 papers that are related to chromatography in the organized contributed, and poster sessions and workshops. The advance registration fee of $105 allows unlimited access to all parts of the technical programme as well as the exhibition. Pittcon also offers free one-day registration on 17 March 2011.

Posters will be displayed in two opposite sections on the floor, the Red and the Blue Poster Areas. New for 2011 is Centennial Park, located in the middle of the floor that will provide a place for conferees to relax, network, view exhibitor videos, enjoy an interactive Coca-Cola display and pick up complimentary copies of leading industry publications.

Social Networking

As social networking and mobile devices are on the rise and fast becoming invaluable tools for business and scientific communities, both will play a significant role in Pittcon this year. For the first time, Pittcon will have a Twitter Café located in Pittcon booth #5079 where conferees can send Pittcon Tweets that will appear on a large screen monitor in Centennial Park. Pittcon has also implemented a mobile application by the name of Pittcon 2011 for attendees to build an agenda and to access exhibitor, technical programme and short course information prior, during and after the event. Local maps, restaurants and Atlanta attraction listings will help visitors find their way around the city after conference hours.

Awards for Scientific Achievements

An important function of Pittcon is to recognize and honour scientists who have made outstanding contributions to analytical chemistry and applied spectroscopy. This year Janusz Pawliszyn, professor of chemistry at the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada and a member of LCGC Europe's editorial advisory board (EAB) will receive the prestigious Dal Nogare Award for 2011, presented by The Chromatography Forum of Delaware Valley (CFDV), for his development of SPME (Solid Phase Micro-Extraction) technology. Awardees are chosen on the basis of contributions to the fundamental understanding of the chromatographic process. Sessions presented in this award include Unified Theory of Extraction – Where Does SPME Fit?; Monitoring Free Drug Concentrations; Ionic Liquids in Separations and Mass Spectrometry, A New Frontier; Directions in Separation Science to Register an Agricultural Product; Nitrophenols: Measurement in Air and Rainwater by 2-Dimensional; and Chromatography and Very Long Path Detection.

Philip Britz-McKibbin, associate professor of bio-analytical chemistry and chemical biology at McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada, will receive the 2011 ACS Division of Analytical Chemistry Award for Young Investigators in Separation Science. Philip's research interests have included fundamental studies of separation science involving capillary electrophoresis and mass spectrometry, which are aimed at the development of novel methodologies relevant to metabolomics, metabolite profiling and biomolecular interactions. Sessions included in this award presentation are New Advances in Capillary Electrophoresis–Mass Spectrometry for Metabolomics; Mass Spectrometry-based Metabolomics as a Unique Biochemical Approach for Therapeutic Discovery; Towards a Standardized Metabolomics Repository; Role of Separation Science in Biomarker Discovery: Opportunities and Pitfalls; and What the Heck is that? The Challenge of Metabolite Identification in Metabolomics.

Pittcon attracts nearly 20000 attendees from industry, academia and government from 90 countries worldwide. Each year thousands of scientists take advantage of the opportunity to see the latest in instrumentation all on one exhibition floor. At this year's Exposition, 1000 exhibiting companies, including leaders in chromatography instrumentation and accessories, will be present at the Georgia World Congress Center from 14–17 March 2011.

A complete list of exhibitors is available on the Pittcon website at www.pittcon.org.

Contact: Marian Nardozzi

E-mail: nardozzi@pittcon.org

Location: Georgia World Congress Center, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

Tel: +1 412 825 3220 x 203

Fax: +1 412 825 3224

Registration: www.pittcon.org/register