Chad Atkins has been named the winner of the 2015 Young Chemist Award. Competition for the $10,000 award, from Metrohm USA, is open to all graduate, post-graduate, and doctorate students residing and studying in the United States and Canada, who are performing novel research in the fields of titration, ion chromatography, spectroscopy, and electrochemistry.
Atkins is completing his PhD at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, BC) where he works under the supervision of Robin Turner and Michael Blades. His research uses Raman spectroscopy to assess the egradation of stored red blood cells to measure age-related changes in stored cell breakdown. By measuring amples through the storage bag, the possibility of contamination is reduced. Confirming the viability of stored red blood cells prior to transfusion leads to a more successful outcome.
This is the third year Metrohm USA and Metrohm Canada have awarded the Young Chemist Award.
“Metrohm has a history of giving back to the scientific community,” said Edward Colihan, president and CEO of Metrohm USA. “This year we saw a record number of applications for this award, demonstrating ingenuity and a passion for solving very practical problems. We are proud to support the next generation of scientists.”
Best of the Week: National Space Day, Battery Analysis
May 2nd 2025Top articles published this week include interviews from our National Space Day content series, a news story about satellite-based spectroscopy, and an interview about battery analysis conducted at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
Using Spectroscopy to Measure Geochemical Transformations of Gypsum for Ca-Sulfate Detection on Mars
May 2nd 2025Research was conducted exploring the dehydration pathways of gypsum (CaSO₄·2H₂O) and its interactions with chloride (Cl) salts under a range of thermal and environmental conditions relevant to Earth and Mars.Spectroscopy spoke to Merve Yeşilbaş, corresponding author of a paper based on this work (1), about the research.
The Role of LIBS in ChemCam and SuperCam: An Interview with Kelsey Williams, Part III
May 2nd 2025In this extended Q&A interview, we sit down with Kelsey Williams, a postdoctoral researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), who is working on planetary instrumentation using spectroscopic techniques such as laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) and laser ablation molecular isotopic spectrometry (LAMIS). In Part III, Williams goes into detail about ChemCam and SuperCam and how LIBS is used in both these instruments.