How has spectroscopy training changed? A recent panel discussion explored this topic, discussing how SpecAcademy can widen access without losing the value of hands-on instruction.
News|Articles|October 30, 2025
Insights from a Food Lab
Author(s)Milestone
Efficient and reliable sample preparation is essential for food manufacturers and contract laboratories tasked with delivering accurate, regulatory-compliant analytical data. From elemental testing to nutritional profiling, laboratories must manage increasingly complex matrices while maintaining fast turnaround times and data integrity. This paper explores how microwave sample preparation technologies—including digestion, extraction, and hydrolysis—support high-throughput food and feed analysis. It will also address the “total workflow” approach that ultimately helps labs reduce processing time, improve data quality, and enhance operational efficiency across a wide range of applications. Light Labs, a modern analytical testing facility committed to food safety and lab efficiency, is also featured for how they leverage single reaction chamber (SRC) microwave technology to streamline trace metals analysis.
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How has spectroscopy education evolved over the years?
FT-IR spectroscopy, long treated as a mature bench technique for confirming a carbonyl stretch or fingerprinting a polymer, has quietly become one of chemistry’s most versatile discovery engines: it now infers molecular structure straight from a spectrum without a reference library, resolves chemistry tens of nanometers wide, and screens a fingerstick of blood for disease in minutes. The last five years of published research show FT-IR moving from a confirmatory tool into a predictive, autonomous, and field-ready analytical platform.
In this panel discussion, five SpecAcademy instructors examined why spectroscopy expertise has declined and how SpecAcademy aims to rebuild it through curated, fundamentals-based education suited to increasingly complex analytical work.
A recent roundtable discussion with the SpecAcademy instructors explored why spectroscopy expertise has eroded and how SpecAcademy aims to rebuild it.
The agreement gives North American customers a stocked, domestic source for InGaAs PIN photodiodes and avalanche photodiodes from the Scottish manufacturer.
The gap between classroom training and industry practice is pushing analysts toward familiar techniques instead of the most appropriate ones.
Panelists from the Society for Applied Spectroscopy, the Coblentz Society, Syensqo, Specac, and the University of Georgia discuss how a mismatch between academic curricula and industry practice leaves many analysts unsure when, and how, to use infrared and Raman spectroscopy.
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