Shaul Mukamel, a distinguished professor of chemistry at the University of California (Irvine, California) was presented with the Bomem-Michelson Award at Pittcon 2016 in Atlanta, Georgia on March 8.

The Hellma Group (Müllheim, Germany), a manufacturer of optical solutions and components for the process industries and research analytical laboratories, will acquire Axiom Analytical Inc. (Tustin, California), a provider of laboratory and process sampling equipment.

VUV Analytics (Cedar Park, Texas) is collaborating with Caltech Environmental Analysis Center (EAC) in Pasadena, California, in a closed-ended project that explores new application capabilities using VUV’s VGA-100 Vacuum Ultraviolet (VUV) detector.

Spectroscopy magazine is pleased to announce the addition of Lora Brehm to its Editorial Advisory Board.

Steven J. Ray, an assistant professor of chemistry at the State University of New York at Buffalo, received the inaugural Young Plasma Scientist Award today at the Winter Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry in Tucson, Arizona. The award, judged by an international selection committee and sponsored by Thermo Fisher Scientific, recognizes the work of a scientist no older than 45 years old working in the field of plasma spectrochemistry.

Nicoló Omenetto, a professor of chemistry at the University of Florida, received the 2016 Winter Conference Award in Plasma Spectrochemistry today at the Winter Conference in Tucson, Arizona.

Spectroscopy magazine is pleased to announce the addition of Rohit Bhargava to its editorial advisory board.

The Coblentz Society has named Kenneth L. Knappenberger Jr. as the recipient of the 2016 Coblentz Award.

Spectroscopy magazine is pleased to announce the addition of Lu Yang to its editorial advisory board.

Timothy A. Cross has received the 2015 EAS Award for Outstanding Achievements in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. The award was presented to him at the Eastern Analytical Symposium conference in Somerset, New Jersey, on November 16.

John A. Reffner has been named the recipient of the 2015 Gold Medal Award from the New York section of the Society for Applied Spectroscopy. The award was presented to him at the 2015 Eastern Analytical Symposium in Somerset, New Jersey, on November 16.

Benoît Igne has won the Eastern Analytical Symposium’s 2015 Award for Outstanding Achievements in Near-Infrared (NIR) Spectroscopy. He was honored at an award symposium at the 2015 EAS award held in Somerset, New Jersey, on November 18.

Peter D. Wentzell has received the 2015 Award for Outstanding Achievements in Chemometrics from the Eastern Analytical Symposium (EAS). The award was presented to Wentzell at an oral symposium at the 2015 EAS conference in Somerset, New Jersey, on November 17.

At the 2015 SciX conference held September 27–October 2 in Providence, Rhode Island, two students were awarded the FACSS Student Award, and two scholars were awarded the Tomas A. Hirschfeld Award.

The 2015 Eastern Analytical Symposium and Exposition (EAS) takes place November 16–18, in Somerset, New Jersey.

The Society for Applied Spectroscopy (SAS) presented the SAS undergraduate student research excellence, student poster awards, and student travel grants, on Sunday, September 27, at SciX 2015, at the opening reception and student poster session.

Nipro Corporation (Osaka, Japan) has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Infraredx, Inc. (Burlington, Massachusetts).

Agilent Technologies Inc. (Santa Clara, California) has agreed to support research by Steven Gross, a faculty member in the Department of Pharmacology at Weill Cornell Medical College (New York, New York), into amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

The 2015 SciX Conference, presented by FACSS, is bringing together top scientists to address the complex issues of analytical chemistry in the developing world.

Although near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy is not a particularly sensitive technique, it can be implemented with little or no sample preparation and thus is well suited to applications such as process monitoring, materials science, and medical uses. We asked a panel of experts to comment on important current applications of NIR, as well as emerging new areas of application and the challenges involved in those newer applications.

The analysis of hair samples is gaining increasing interest in forensic science because of several advantages. Hair samples are easy to collect and store. The keratin protein in hair is also quite stable, and the amino acid composition of human hair keratin may vary significantly between individuals. Glen Jackson of West Virginia University has been developing various mass spectrometry (MS)-based methods for forensic analysis of hair samples, and he recently spoke to us about this work.

As a fast, quasi-nondestructive analytical technique, X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy is useful for a wide range of applications. To get a sense of the current breadth of XRF’s use and its potential growth in new areas, we asked a panel of experts to comment on the most important application areas for XRF, including the challenges involved and how XRF competes with other techniques.

The speciation of trace elements has become much more common in recent years, and in some cases is now required by certain regulatory bodies - such as for the analysis of hexavalent chromium in drinking water. At the same time, speciation methods are becoming sophisticated as researchers try to address more complex questions about how different metal species are transported and interact with the environment and specifically with plants, animals, and humans, often forming complexes with other compounds that are more complicated to analyze. Prof.