Florida's Scientific Community Plays A Major Role In Pittcon 2012

Technical Program, Short Courses & Exposition

The Pittcon Organizing Committee is pleased to announce that more than 72 select members of Florida's scientific community will be making presentations in symposia; organized contributed, oral, and poster sessions; and workshops for the technical program at Pittcon 2012, in Orlando, March 11-15, at the Orange County Convention Center. These presenters will be among the 2,000 plus scientists, researchers, and professionals who will be speaking and introducing their research at Pittcon 2012, the world's largest annual conference and exposition for laboratory science. The 2012 Technical Program will cover a diverse range of topics such as life sciences, drug discovery, nanotechnology, biomedical, environmental, homeland security, food science, forensics, agriculture, analytical chemistry, biomass, and many more.

New for this year is a Capstone Lecture, "Redesigning DNA: Fixing God's Mistakes," which will be presented by Steven A. Benner. Benner is a Distinguished Fellow at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution (Gainesville, Florida) which he founded following service on the faculty at Harvard University, the ETH Zurich, and the University of Florida.

We are very honored that our former (2010) Plenary Lecturer Alan G. Marshall from Florida State University will receive the 2012 Pittsburgh Analytical Chemistry Award. This award acknowledges Marshall's contributions to the field of analytical chemistry through his continuing development of Fourier transform ICR mass spectrometry. His current research spans FT-ICR instrumentation development, fossil fuels and environmental analysis, and mapping the primary and higher-order structures of biological macromolecules and their complexes. Dr. Marshall will also present a symposium, "Fourier Transform Ion Cyclotron Resonance: The Mass Spectrometry Zenith" and a workshop, "Algae Polar Lipids Characterized by On-Line Liquid Chromatography Coupled with Hybrid Linear Quadrupole Ion Trap/Fourier Transform Ion Cyclotron Resonance Mass Spectrometry."

The technical program includes some of Florida's top academics from institutions such as the University of Central Florida, University of North Florida, Florida State University, University of Florida, Florida International University, University of South Florida, and Florida State College at Jacksonville. A complete list of participants is available upon request.

In addition, the Pittcon Short Course program includes instructors from local organizations such as Steven Schultz, Writing at Work, Inc; Tod Fairbanks and Jill Diodato, Banner Center for Life Sciences; Meredith May, Atlas Spine Inc.; Stuart Chalk, University of North Florida; and David Bliesner, Delphi Analytical Services, Inc.

In addition, this year, there will be more than 30 Florida-based companies that will be exhibiting. These range from manufacturers of analytical equipment, peripheral products, lab supplies, and laboratory system solutions and include such leading names as BioTools, Inc., Metrohm USA, Ocean Optics, STARLIMS, American Lab Design, and Separation Systems, Inc.-to name a few.

A complete, up-to-date listing of all exhibitors, technical sessions, and short courses is available at www.pittcon.org.

About Pittcon
Pittcon® is a registered trademark of The Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy, a Pennsylvania non-profit organization. Co-sponsored by the Spectroscopy Society of Pittsburgh and the Society for Analytical Chemists of Pittsburgh, Pittcon is the premier annual conference and exposition on laboratory science. Proceeds from Pittcon fund science education and outreach at all levels, kindergarten through adult. Pittcon donates more than a million dollars a year to provide financial and administrative support for various science outreach activities includingscience equipment grants, research grants, scholarships and internships for students, awards to teachers and professors, and grants to public science centers, libraries and museums. For more information, visit www.pittcon.org.

SOURCE: Pittcon 2012