Advances in Separation Science - The Chromatographic Spring Symposium & Annual General Meeting - Paul Ferguson

The Chromatographic Society’s Spring Symposium and Annual General Meeting will be held at the Novartis site in Horsham (West Sussex) on Wednesday 11th and Thursday 12th May 2011. The theme for the meeting is ‘Advances in Separation Science’ with a particular focus on pharmaceutical drug discovery. The Spring Symposium will be held over one-and-a-half days allowing for an extensive range of presentations from academics, industrial speakers and vendors, as well as significant exhibition and networking time. There will also be a Symposium dinner at a local hotel, but capacity is limited to a maximum of 80 attendees. Attendance will therefore be on a first-come-first served basis as indicated during delegate registration. The preliminary programme for the Symposium may be viewed by following the link at the end of this article.

Novartis in Horsham is the UK research site for the pharmaceutical giant Novartis where their inhalation portfolio is researched. As the focus of the meeting will be on small-molecule analysis (principally pharmaceutical), this is a very apt setting for this symposium. Waters have kindly agreed to be principal sponsor for the meeting, and the Chromatographic Society would like to thank and acknowledge them for their support. Our first keynote lecture will be provided by Professor Wolfgang Lindner of the University of Vienna. Professor Lindner is famous for his work in the field of chiral chromatography and The Chromatographic Society recognised his achievements in the field by awarding him the Martin medal in 2009 (having previously been awarded the Jubilee medal in 1991). His talk will be ‘Enantiomer Separations with Chiral Ion Exchangers, a Unique Class of Chiral Columns’, where he will discuss the application of his quinine and quinidine based ion exchange chiral columns. The second keynote lecture speaker has not yet been finalised, but the organisers are in discussion with high quality scientists from both the US and Europe to present in the Wednesday afternoon session