LabAutomation2009 Award Winners Announced
The Association for Laboratory Automation (ALA) has announced the winner of the LabAutomation2009 $10,000 ALA Innovation Award.
The Association for Laboratory Automation (ALA) has announced the winner of the LabAutomation2009 $10,000 ALA Innovation Award. Hyongsok (Tom) Soh, Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara, was honored for his podium presentation, High Performance Magnetic Separation in Microfluidic Channels.
The winner was announced during the closing plenary session at LabAutomation2009, the world’s leading conference and exhibition on emerging laboratory technologies. The conference, which was held January 24-28, 2009 at the Palm Springs Convention Center, Palm Springs, CA, played host to 4,237 participants from around the world.
“The competition was tough and we were very pleased with the variety and quality of submissions for this year’s award,” said ALA Innovation Award Chair William Sonnefeld, Ph.D. “All of the presentations by the 10 finalists were outstanding, but it was Doctor Soh’s presentation that stood out above the rest. The decision was difficult, but the panel felt that his presentation in particular deserved the award. The ALA Innovation Award was specifically created to recognize this type of leading-edge work and the outstanding scientist behind it. It’s exciting that we have so many finalists worthy of this designation.”
“This year’s 10 finalists are truly all winners,” continued Sonnefeld. “Each of them has been invited to present their work at ACHEMA 2009 in Frankfurt, Germany. Their travel expenses will be paid by ALA and DECHEMA.”
Now in its third year, ALA’s New Product Award (NPA) Designation recognized the top three outstanding new products showcased on the LabAutomation2009 exhibit floor. This year’s winners were:
- Agilent Technologies – Agilent Direct Drive Robot
- GeneFluidics – PROTEUS ROBOTIC SYSTEM
- METTLER TOLEDO – QUANTOS QB1
Along with the ALA Innovation Award and ALA New Product Award (NPA) Designation, ALA selected a limited number of student posters from around the world to be presented at the conference and considered for the Student Poster Awards Competition, which result in cash awards. LabAutomation2009 student poster winners were:
- 1st Place – Vinu Venkatraman, Portland State University
”Iridium Oxide Nanomonitors for Real-Time Health Monitoring Systems” - 2nd Place – Raghunandan M. Kainkaryam, University of Michigan
”poolMC: Smart Pooling of mRNA Samples in Microarray Experiments” - 3rd Place – Nicholas G. Batz, Saint Louis University
”Selective Detection of Endogenous Thiols Using Microchip-Based Flow Analysis and Mercury/Gold Amalgams Microelectrodes”
Source: The Association for Laboratory Automation