CHICAGO – Through research and exploration, scientists are continually finding ways to develop new technologies and address challenges in the laboratory. Recognizing a select group of individuals who have made extraordinary innovative advances, the Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening (SLAS) is pleased to announce the nine finalists who will vie for its $10,000 Innovation Award, the prestigious honor that will be presented to the top candidate at SLAS2012, February 4-8, 2012 in San Diego, CA, USA.

The nine SLAS Innovation Award finalists are:

• David Beebe; University of Wisconsin; Madison, WI, USA – One-Step Analyte Isolation
• Rosemary Drake; TAP Biosystems; Royston, United Kingdom – New Platform Technology for Simple, Consistent Production of Collagen Based Tissues for Physiologically Relevant Assays
• Dan Dongeun Huh; Harvard University; Boston, MA, USA – A Human Breathing Lung-on-a-Chip for Drug Screening and Nanotoxicology Applications
• Sunghoon Kwon; Seoul National University; Seoul, South Korea – Partipetting & Spinning Color Barcoded Microparticles for Ultraplex Bio-assay
• Liang Li; SlipChip LLC; Chicago, IL, USA – SlipChip: High-Throughput Platform for Protein Crystallization and Molecular Diagnostics
• David Nolte; Purdue University; West Lafayette, IN, USA – Tissue Dynamics Imaging for Phenotypic Profiling in Drug Screening
• Aydogan Ozcan; University of California; Los Angeles, CA, USA – Ultra-High Throughput On-Chip Microscopy and Cytometry Using Lensfree Computational Imaging
• Randall Peterson; Massachusetts General Hospital; Charlestown, MA, USA – Automated, In Vivo Screening for Behavior-Modifying Compounds
• Rajaram Krishnan; Biological Dynamics, Inc.; San Diego, CA, USA – An AC Electrokinetic Device for the Separation and Detection of Cancer Related Nanosomes

The SLAS Innovation Award recognizes the top SLAS2012 podium presenter who put forth research that demonstrates outstanding innovation and contributes to the exploration of laboratory technologies. The panel of judges that selected these nine finalists based on their submitted abstracts will evaluate each of the finalists’ podium presentations at SLAS2012 and then select the overall best presentation as the $10,000 Innovation Award recipient.

“The SLAS Innovation Award honors the work behind that one unique presentation at SLAS2012 that is exceedingly innovative in the exploration of new technologies or advancement of mature technologies,” says Jörg Kutter, Ph.D., SLAS Innovation Award Panel of Judges Chair. “All of our finalists have submitted presentations that will benefit the scientific community, and the panel of judges is looking forward to determining the award recipient at the First Annual SLAS Conference and Exhibition.”

The $10,000 Innovation Award recipient will be announced Wednesday, February 8 during the SLAS2012 closing keynote session featuring Robert Ballard, Ph.D., Professor at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography and Founder and President of the Institute for Exploration at Mystic Aquarium. In addition to the $10,000 cash prize, the award recipient also receives:

• An invitation to become a member of the panel of judges for the following year
• An invitation to participate on the Annual Conference Program Committee for SLAS2013
• A complimentary one-year membership to SLAS
• Their work featured in an issue of JALA and/or JBS

For more information about the SLAS Innovation Award or SLAS2012, visit http://www.SLAS2012.org.