Agilent Technologies (Santa Clara, California) has acquired Cobalt Light Systems (Oxfordshire, United Kingdom), a provider of Raman spectroscopic instruments for the pharmaceutical industry, applied markets, and public safety.

Applications are invited for the 2018 Gordon F. Kirkbright Bursary Award. This prestigious award is given annually to enable a promising student or tenured young scientist of any nation to attend a recognized scientific meeting or visit a place of learning.

A major international center for scientific research in the Middle East, supported by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), recently was inaugurated in Jordan.

Eurofins Scientific (Luxembourg), an international group of laboratories, has plans to establish a new pharmaceutical chemistry and microbiology facility in Livingston, Scotland.

The annual Spectroscopy salary survey investigated spectroscopy employment markets in 2017, and for the first time in three years our results indicated average salaries are on the rise (+2.7%).

ASTM’s committee on analytical chemistry for metals, ores, and related materials has developed a new method for analyzing the composition of aluminum and aluminum alloys.

Edward I. Solomon, Stanford University’s Monroe E. Spaght Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Photon Science at SLAC, has won the 2017 Pittsburgh Spectroscopy Award.

Slobodan Sasic has won the 2017 Coblentz Society–Williams-Wright Award. He was presented with the award on Wednesday, March 8, at Pittcon 2017 in Chicago, Illinois.

At the 2017 European Winter Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry, held in St. Anton, Austria, February 19–24, several awards recognized the work of both young and seasoned atomic spectroscopists.

The International Centre for Diffraction Data has selected the recipients for the Ludo Frevel Crystallography Scholarship.

Spectroscopy magazine is pleased to announce the addition of Matthew Baker to its editorial advisory board.

Samuel W. Coleman, who is the owner of Colespec Solutions, has won the 2016 Award for Outstanding Achievements in Near-Infrared Spectroscopy from the Eastern Analytical Symposium (EAS).

Gary Martin, who is a Senior Principal Scientist at Merck Research Laboratories in Rahway, New Jersey, has received the 2016 Award for Outstanding Achievements in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy from the Eastern Analytical Symposium (EAS).

James G. Fujimoto, who is the Elihu Thomson Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), has received the 2016 EAS New York Section of the Society for Applied Spectroscopy Gold Medal Award.

At SciX 2016 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the Society for Applied Spectroscopy sponsored the special session “Analytical Chemists Easing World Poverty.” This session was founded in 2011 by SAS Past-President Diane Parry to highlight unmet measurement needs in developing nations. With the support of sponsors like the SAS, Spectroscopy magazine, and ChromAfrica, it has evolved into a popular session that examines a variety of topics ranging from technical solutions to instrumentation problems to cultural challenges of Westerners working in developing nations.

In the United States, a lack of qualified candidates for jobs in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) underscores an urgent need for educators to find ways to draw students into these areas of study.

The 2016 annual meeting of the Association of Analytical Communities (AOAC), taking place September 18–21 in Dallas, Texas, will include scientific sessions discussing the use of spectroscopy and mass spectrometry techniques in the analysis of food, dietary supplements, and pharmaceuticals.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded $1.18 million to faculty at the Indiana University School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis and the IU School of Medicina (Indianapolis, Indiana) for a research collaboration that unites two cutting-edge technologies in the discovery and analysis of proteoforms.

Proceeds from Pittcon 2016 are distributed by its sponsoring societies, the Society for Analytical Chemists of Pittsburgh (SACP), and the Spectroscopy Society of Pittsburgh (SSP).

Kandice Tanner of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has received the annual Young Fluorescence Investigator Award from Horiba Scientific.

Analytica 2016, held this week in Munich, includes strong programming in spectroscopy techniques. Two sessions-one on modern analytical spectroscopy and another on bioprocessing monitoring-are entirely dedicated to spectroscopy.

Spectroscopy magazine is pleased to announce the addition of Bernhard Lendl to its editorial advisory board.

The latest Spectroscopy salary survey shows that the average salary has dropped slightly, despite increasing workloads. But has this impacted job satisfaction?

Matthew Baker, a senior lecturer in chemistry at the University of Strathclyde, in Glasgow, has won the inaugural Emerging Leader in Molecular Spectroscopy Award, which is sponsored by Spectroscopy magazine. This new annual award recognizes the achievements and aspirations of a talented young molecular spectroscopist, selected by an independent scientific committee. The award will be presented to Baker at the SciX 2016 conference in September, where he will give a plenary lecture and be honored in an award symposium.

Juergen Popp, a chair-holder of physical chemistry at the Friedrich-Schiller University Jena (Jena, Thuringia, Germany), was presented with the Pittsburgh Spectroscopy Award on March 8 at Pittcon 2016 in Atlanta, Georgia.

Sanford A. Asher, a Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), was presented with the Pittsburgh Analytical Chemistry Award on March 8 at Pittcon 2016 in Atlanta, Georgia.