Cindy Delonas

Ji-Xin Cheng of Boston University is the winner of the 2020 Pittsburgh Spectroscopy Award, which is presented by the Spectroscopy Society of Pittsburgh, a co-founder of the Pittcon conference. Established in 1957, the award honors an individual who has made outstanding contributions in the field of spectroscopy.

Christopher D. Brown is the winner of the 2020 Williams-Wright Award, which is presented by the Coblentz Society. The award is presented annually to an industrial spectroscopist who has made significant contributions to vibrational spectroscopy while working in industry.

Scott D. Tanner is the 2020 winner of the 2020 Winter Conference Lifetime Achievement Award in Plasma Spectrochemistry, sponsored by Thermo Fisher Scientific.

X-ray diffraction (XRD) techniques are often used to understand the nature of stacking of layers that form clay nanocrystals. But there are problems with these techniques that make applications difficult and often ambiguous. Dr. David Bish, Professor Emeritus at Indiana University (Bloomington, Indiana), and former students Dr. Hongji Yuan and Dr. Alberto Leonardi have been exploring ways to streamline and accelerate the process with a new matrix methodology as well as gaining more accurate results through the use of simulated profiles based on very large-scale atomistic models. We spoke to Dr. Bish about his group’s work in these areas and what these improvements can mean for the future of XRD modeling.

Christy L. Haynes, of the University of Minnesota (Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota), has been working with her research team to explore the use of a rapid and facile technique to empirically screen affinity agents of diverse compositions for all manner of targets. Here, she describes the advantages of using isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) for screening of polymer affinity agents for use with surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS).

We present a brief review of this year’s ASMS conference, which took place June 4–8 in Indianapolis, Indiana.

We present a brief review of this year's ASMS conference, which took place June 14–19, 2014, in Baltimore, Maryland