The RSC Environmental Chemistry Group has just announced the the 2021 meeting on the Chemistry of the Whole Environment (#EnvChem2021) will be held online on Friday, the 25th of June 2021. This meeting, organised by RSC Environmental Chemistry Group and the UK branch of the Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, provides a forum for early career and established researchers working in environmental chemistry and ecotoxicology to share their latest research findings, and will focus on the following themes:

• Environmental Processes in Soil, Water and Air
• Emerging Contaminants
• Novel techniques
• Atmospheric Chemistry
• Ecotoxicology​

Registration is free but closes on the 3rd of May, while abstract submissions will be accepted for both oral presentations and Creative Display Presentations till that date. More information can be found at the RSC Events page, here.

The Community for Analytical Measurement Science (CAMS) is an industrially-led, strategically connected community, dedicated to supply world class analytical measurement science (AMS) training, research and innovation. The CAMS Institute aims to be the focal point within the UK for skills development in metrology and metrological applications in the chemical and biological sciences, as well as a centre for measurement science education and training, providing skills that support life-long learning. The CAMS Conference 2020 is a free virtual (via Skype) event running on 16-17 September, consisting of 4 live sessions, interactive Knowledge and Skills Exchange Workshops, with a parallel CAMS Virtual Poster Competition, where attendees can discuss their current research, good practice or novel idea in the field of analytical measurement. Click here to register today!

The 16th International Symposium on Hyphenated Techniques in Chromatography and Separation Technology (HTC-16) will be taking place in Ghent from the 29th to the 31st of January, 2020. The conference is being organised by the Royal Flemish Chemical Society (KVCV) and the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Separation Science Group (SSG). The conference is organised every other year, and focuses on state-of-the-art developments in separation technologies and hyphenated techniques. In three parallel sessions over a total of three days, leading researchers from academia and industry will be presenting plenary lectures, keynote lectures, tutorials, oral and poster-flash presentations, on fundamental and practical aspects of LC and GC, including UHPLC-MS, 2D-LC, GC(×GC)-MS, and SFC.

Three short courses are also planned for Tuesday the 28th of January, the day preceding the start of the main conference. One of these short courses, entitled ‘Fundamentals of Chromatographic Separations‘ will be led by members of the RSC SSG, and will demystify commonly encountered chromatographic terms and descriptors, not only explaining them theoretically but describing their practical effects. Topics covered will include:

• The impact of temperature on retention factors, efficiency and selectivity
• The role of the stationary phase: why would you choose one phase over another?
• What role do column dimensions play – including length, internal diameter and film thickness if applicable?
• Why are there so many C18’s and 5%diphenyl/95%dimethyl polysiloxane phases, and how do they differ?
• Why do smaller (sub-2µm) fully porous and/or superficially porous (coreshell) particles provide significant benefits in LC efficiency?
• What impact does changing the carrier gas have on GC efficiency?
• How does changing the LC solvent alter retention factor and selectivity?

Further details and registration information can be found at the conference website, here. You can register for HTC-16 all the way till the 19th of January, but there are only a limited number of places on the short course, so register today!

There’s little more than a week to go before our 2019 Emerging Separations Technologies symposium at Burlington House, and the anticipation is building! The ubiquity of liquid chromatography, SPE etc. in analytical labs is often misread as an indication of the maturity of separation science as a scientific discipline. As a result, it is easy to overlook the continuous and often remarkable advances in instrumentation and software that are critical for the continued application of such separation techniques. This one-day symposium, organised together with the Chromatographic Society, will focus on emerging technological innovations which are dramatically improving the pace, accuracy, sensitivity or analyte coverage of routine analytical separations. As usual, the symposium program will be run alongside a vendor exhibition, with plenty of opportunities to network, and lunch will be provided by the excellent Burlington House team.
Registration details and a full agenda may be found on the RSC Events website, here, and registration closes on the 27th of March. Discounted registration rates apply to members of the RSC, ChromSoc and the BMSS, as well as to students; special ChromSoc bursaries are also available for students wishing to attend.

The Royal Society of Chemistry’s Separation Science Group, the  Environmental Chemistry Group, and the Water Science Forum are very pleased to announce a joint meeting on the Latest Advances in the Analysis of Complex Environmental Matrices, to be held on Friday the 22^nd of February 2019, at the RSC’s Burlington House venue in London.

As suggested by the title, this meeting will highlight advances in the analysis of complex environmental matrices such as soils, sediments, water and air, by GC, HPLC, MS and cheminformatics-based approaches. The programme includes talks on a diverse and fascinating array of topics, including (but not limited to) the use of machine learning for ecotoxicology, automated sample preparation methods for pesticide analysis and the use of GC x GC TOF for remote atmospheric monitoring. The keynote lecture will be delivered by Dr Emma Schymanki (University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg), on the use of environmental cheminformatics for the identification of unknown chemicals. Registration is open till the 19^th of February, and further details, including a full agenda, can be found here.

We’re only two weeks away from the SSG & ChromSoc’s Advances in Clinical and Forensic Analysis 2018 meeting, which will take place on the 27th of November at Burlington House in London. This one-day meeting features the latest innovations in the field, presented by leading researchers from across the UK. As we’ve mentioned in previous posts, the meeting this year is a special one for the SSG, as it celebrates the career and achievements of our Keynote speaker, Prof Dave Perrett. While most separation scientists know of Prof Perrett as a world-renowned expert in bioanalytical science, his students at Barts Medical School know him even better as an inspiring and creative educator. It is thus fitting that students can now register for this meeting at no cost. Retired members of the RSC can also register for free, and registration details for everyone can be found at: http://www.rsc.org/events/detail/35855/advances-in-clinical-and-forensic-analysis-2018

If you’re still undecided about attending, we’ve put together a selection of recent high-impact separation science publications from some of our speakers – hopefully this will convince you to register today!

• Dr Melanie Bailey (University of Surrey): in Analytical Chemistry (2018), p. 12094: Application of Various Normalization Methods for Microscale Analysis of Tissues Using Direct Analyte Probed Nanoextraction
• Prof Leon Barron (King’s College London): in Journal of Chromatography A (2018), p. 82: Prediction of collision cross section and retention time for broad scope screening in gradient reversed-phase liquid chromatography-ion mobility-high resolution accurate mass spectrometry
• Dr Joost Brandsma (University of Southampton): in Metabolomics (2018), p. 123: Lipid phenotyping of lung epithelial lining fluid in healthy human volunteers
• Prof Hector Keun (Imperial College London): in BMC Medicine (2018), p. 202: Determinants of the urinary and serum metabolome in children from six European populations

After the success of our previous Advances in Clinical Analysis meetings, we are very pleased to announce Advances in Clinical and Forensic Analysis 2018, organised along with the Chromatographic Society, to be held on Tuesday 27th November 2018 at the RSC’s Burlington House venue in London.

Clinical and forensic analysis together cover some of the most exciting and important topics in the life sciences, and this meeting will provide insights into the latest methodologies and technological developments across these application areas. The meeting will focus on separation and complementary/alternative techniques, along with case studies from the hospital, commercial and academic areas. The programme has been designed to give attendees an update for both routine and problem solving in clinical and forensic analysis, and includes talks from established experts and emerging professionals, including Prof Leon Barron (King’s College London), Dr Melanie Bailey (University of Surrey), Dr Gordon Ross (Agilent Technologies) and Dr Joost Brandsma (University of Southampton), amongst others.  This year, the meeting will also celebrate the career and achievements of Prof David Perrett, our keynote speaker.

Advances in Clinical and Forensic Analysis 2018 will also provide attendees with a unique means of sharing real experiences with other professionals and will provide excellent networking opportunities. We believe this will be a highly interesting and well-attended event, and registration is now open here. Poster abstracts will be accepted till the 11th of November.

The warm weather has come and gone, but we’re not missing it (too much), because the next few months are packed full of exciting events for separation scientists. The events calendar on our website already lists several of these events, along with links to registration and abstract submission pages. But the SSG members have their own favorites amongst these, including:

* The 39th BMSS Annual Meeting (11-13 September 2018): The BMSS annual meeting is a fixture in our autumn calendars, as it remains one of the important MS events here in the UK. The Intro to MS course that precedes the conference is an excellent resource for beginning practitioners of MS, and this year, BMSS39 in Cambridge will focus on the life sciences and (bio)pharma. The scientific program is being organised in collaboration with the Joint Pharmaceutical Analysis Group (JPAG), and the International Reid Bioanalytical Forum (ChromSoc). While registration for the main conference has already closed, there might be spots left on the Intro to MS course; more details can be found at http://www.bmss.org.uk/bmss2018

* The 2018 International Symposium on Chromatography (23-27 September): the ISC is one of the premier meetings for discussion of all modes of chromatography and separation sciences with a broad coverage of techniques and applications. Through a combination of oral and poster presentations, tutorials, short courses, vendor lectures and seminars, and an international exhibition on Instrumentation and Services, ISC 2018 will cover the advances, fundamentals, challenges, trends and applications of separation techniques, chromatography and mass spectrometry on a wide range of topics. The Symposium will take place in Cannes-Mandelieu, Côte d’Azur, on the French Riviera. Register at: http://isc2018.fr/registrations/

*ChromSoc Grassroots Meeting (5-8 October): In October 2016, as part of the Society’s Diamond anniversary celebrations, The Chromatographic Society held its first Grass Roots event in Grasmere in the Lake District. The course focussed on teaching the fundamentals of liquid chromatography to graduate students and novice chromatographers from industry. The Society repeated the course in Church Stretton in October 2017. The Grass Roots 3 event will look to build on the fundamentals taught on the previous Grass Roots courses. The course will focus on reversed-phase method development for small molecules. This will be of particular relevance for attendees working with pharmaceutical compounds, but the concepts and approaches will be equally relevant to those working in the food, environmental and other industries. The event will be delivered by a number of chromatographers with extensive training and industrial experience (Prof. Mel Euerby (Shimadzu), Tony Taylor (Crawford Scientific), Prof. Roman Szucs (Pfizer) and Dr Paul Ferguson (AstraZeneca)). While the meeting will be primarily educational, there will also be extensive opportunities for networking (primarily on walks included in the schedule) and socialising. Register at: https://www.eiseverywhere.com/ereg/index.php?eventid=341155&

* 8th International Conference & Exhibition on Water, Wastewater and Environmental Monitoring (21-22 November): WWEM 2018 is a two-day event, organised together with industry partners including the Sensors for Water Interest Group, the Water Industry Process Automation & Control group, The Pump Centre, the BMSS and the SSG. The exhibition features 150 participating companies, involved in providing instruments, equipment and services to monitor, test and analyse water and wastewater, plus over 80 free technical seminar sessions on applications and case studies. Register today at: https://www.ilmexhibitions.com/wwem/

And if you can’t make it to one of these events,the SSG website and Twitter feed @RSCSepSci are both good places to stay up to date with all the latest news from these events and many others.

Less than three weeks to go before our 2018 Knox Symposium, and we can’t wait to welcome all of our speakers, attendees and Knox Medal winners (past winners and of course, our 2018 awardee, Prof Jim Jorgenson) to beautiful Burlington House for a day of exciting talks! If you haven’t already registered, there’s still time: all registration information can be found on the RSC Events site, here, along with an event agenda and venue details. As usual, we are pleased to offer special registration rates for RSC members and students: this year’s Symposium has been designed to have something of interest to both expert and novice separation scientists, and our two masterclasses on capillary electrophoresis (Prof David Perrett) and plate theory (Prof Deirdre Cabooter) should provide plenty of food for thought for even the most expert users. A minor change to the agenda means that Dr Monika Dittmann (Agilent) and Dr Isabelle Francois (Waters) will be speaking about the impact of Prof Jorgenson’s work on the evolution of modern, high-performance analytical instrumentation. Our afternoon session will be devoted to the current state-of-the-art in chromatography, with talks by Dr Lewis Couchman and Prof Peter Schoenmakers, followed by Prof Apryll Stalcup’s take on the future of separation science. And finally, our 2018 Knox Medal winner, Prof James Jorgenson will be taking the stage to receive the Medal and deliver the 2018 Knox Medal Lecture. We hope to see you there on the 29th of June, both to celebrate Prof Jorgenson’s pathbreaking career, and to join us in an appreciation of some excellent separation science!