PerkinElmer, Inc., a global leader focused on the health and safety of people and the environment, announced today the winners of two industry awards for exceptional achievements in capillary chromatography. The Company presented the Marcel Golay Award to Barry L. Karger, PhD, of Northeastern University for his work in narrow diameter liquid chromatography (LC) and the Leslie Ettre Award to W. Christopher Siegler of the University of Washington for his work in three-dimensional gas chromatography (GC). PerkinElmer presented the awards at the 33rd International Symposium on Capillary Chromatography (ISCC) in Portland, Oregon.

“Recognizing the work of accomplished chromatographers and young leaders in the field is important in ensuring that we encourage new developments in capillary chromatography,” said Eric Ziegler, vice president chromatography business unit, PerkinElmer. “We must continue to work closely with our fellow scientists in academia to partner on solutions that meet the needs of both industry and academia.”

The Marcel Golay Award - Barry L. Karger, PhD, Northeastern University
The Golay award committee, chaired by Professor Milos Novotny of Indiana University, presented the 2009 award to Dr. Barry Karger, director of the Barnett Institute and professor of Analytical Chemistry at Northeastern University. Dr. Karger was recognized for a lifetime of achievement in capillary chromatography, including 315 reviewed publications and 39 patents. Mr. Karger recently broke new ground by using 10 m inside diameter (ID) porous layer open tubular (PLOT) columns to analyze samples with less than 10,000 cells. Compared to the traditional 75 µm ID column, the PLOT platform delivers high sensitivity using less than one-fifth of the sample amount. The small sample requirement enables multiple injections into the column for increased protein identification.

The Leslie Ettre Award – W. Christopher Siegler, University of Washington
The Ettre award was presented to W. Christopher Siegler, a graduate student at the University of Washington, for his paper focused on the addition of a third GC dimensional separation to separate overlapped analytes. The instrument, which Mr. Siegler and other University of Washington researchers, including his advisor, Robert E. Synovec, developed, is simple and requires only minor modifications to a conventional 1D gas chromatograph with a low cost, approximately $1,000. It provides unique separation capability by utilizing three columns with different chemical selectivity to distinguish analytes from complex samples. The researchers used the parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC) method to mathematically analyze the peaks in order to obtain the chromatogram in each dimension.

The 34th International Symposium on Capillary Chromatography was held in Riva del Garda, Italy.

Source: PerkinElmer, Inc.