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Events Archive

September 20th, 2017: Christopher D. Brown – Brave New World of Intelligent Handheld Analytical Instruments

 

Christopher D. Brown, PhD
Chief Technology Officer
908 Device

Wednesday, September 20th, 2017
6:00 pm – Talk
Dinner afterwards at Aubree’s Grill

Eastern Michigan University
Halle Library, Rm 300
955 W. Circle Dr.
Ypsilanti, MI 48197

Joint Meeting With Detroit-ACS and Detroit-SAS

Abstract: Instrumental analytical chemistry is changing, and that change is accelerating. However, the transformation that has been transpiring has to a significant extent been happening on the periphery of the purview of laboratory analytical chemists. A cascade of advances over the last 15 years have given rise to handheld versions of the laboratory spectroscopy standards of FTIR, NIR and Raman spectroscopy and more recently LIBS and mass spectrometry. Separation technologies have also collapsed to the micro-scale. The miniaturization of all of these extraordinarily powerful technologies is giving rise to entirely new applications and categories of users that are sometimes far afield from anything resembling analytical chemistry.

This seminar will review the historical hardware advances that have enabled these developments, and provide insight into the critical and complex systems in analytical informatics/chemometrics and automation that play in these success stories. Analytical chemistry and chemometrics has a tremendous opportunity to drive these developments now and into the future, to lead the advances in analytical technology and informatics that will give rise to the next wave of opportunities, but the community must capitalize on these opportunities quickly. The author will share personal experiences and thoughts on this front.

The speaker will have a number of these handheld systems with him, including Raman, FTIR and MS to illustrate a number of the discussed challenges and opportunities.

Biographical Sketch: Chris has been involved with academic and commercial efforts to miniaturize a range of complex analytical systems for the last 20 years. An integral focus of his work has been in the information theoretic and chemometric frameworks that allow these systems to self-govern, and provide analytical answers.