Spectroscopy in Agriculture: An Interview with Dmitry Kurouski

In this Q&A, we recap the October edition of “What’s Nu,” which covered topics such as how novel spectroscopic and analytical methods are transforming environmental monitoring, medical treatment, and accessibility in scientific research.

In this Q&A article, we highlight several prominent researchers being recognized at the 2026 SciX Conference for their significant contributions to spectroscopy and photonics and discuss what these researchers talked about at the conference.

Amy Colleran, a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Centre of Metabolomics Research at the University of Liverpool, is exploring how to detect volatile organic compounds by bubbling them directly into colloidal silver and gold nanoparticles.

Atomic spectroscopy has quietly gone from counting elements in bulk to counting single nanoparticles, imaging tissue at the micrometer scale, and reading Martian rocks from several meters away. The instruments got smaller, the software got smarter, and the questions they can now answer got a lot more interesting.

At SciX, Jay Kitt discusses a project applying Raman spectroscopy to PFAS analysis, the mentoring role he found after leaving traditional academia, and why machine learning could unlock the biochemical information in vibrational spectra.

UV-vis absorption spectroscopy, one of analytical chemistry's oldest and most accessible techniques, remains foundational to cutting-edge science, underpinning the Nobel Prize-winning discovery and synthesis of quantum dots and continuing to evolve through ultralow stray-light optics, chip-scale sensors, and AI-integrated process analyzers.

Top articles include a new "Spectral Frontiers" column and post-conference coverage of the 2026 SciX show in Sparks, Nevada.

In this interview segment from SciX, Juergen Popp explains why molecular “twins” built from optical measurements could reach patients within a decade, provided the field builds the regulatory, computing, and standards ecosystem around the technology.