James’ research focuses on designing and characterising new materials which can be applied to biological and chemical systems. He integrates chemometrics and analytical chemistry with artificial intelligence to pioneer rapid measurement, diagnostics, and predictive analytics to understand chemical and biological systems, for example how materials interact with bacteria.
Read James’ Review in Analytical Methods: Chemometrics for environmental monitoring: a review
We are delighted to share that nominations for the L.S. Theobald Award are now open.
The L.S. Theobald Award is made in memory of Leslie Stuart Theobald (1898-1979), who was Lecturer/Reader in Analytical Chemistry at Imperial College from 1925 until his retirement in 1963. A brief biography is available on the Royal Society of Chemistry web site. Nominations for the award are invited annually.
The award is made to someone who has demonstrated a significant contribution to the development or application of analytical chemistry/analytical science.
The Analytical Methods Trust (AMT) provides an honorarium of £1000, together with a certificate and covers reasonable expenses incurred in presenting the award lecture.
This collection contains papers and reviews on the topics of advanced materials and substances for separation, microseparation, multidimensional separation, 3D printing for separation, electrophoretic cytometry, and advanced separation techniques for challenging applications (such as food safety and -omics studies).
The collection can be accessed here. You can read the Guest Editors’ introduction to the collection here.
These articles will be free to access until 1st April 2022
We’re pleased to announce that Analytical Methods is now indexed in MEDLINE®. This means that all articles published in Analytical Methods will now be discoverable in this key database for biomedical researchers.
MEDLINE® is a bibliographic database owned by the U.S. National Library of Medicine®, and is the primary component of PubMed®.
Analytical Methods continues to publish early applications of new analytical methods and technologies demonstrating potential for societal impact.
Submit your work now! rsc.li/methods
We are delighted to announce the launch of a new themed collection in Analytical Methods focusing on Advanced Separations, guest edited by Analytical Methods Associate Editor, Zhen Liu (Nanjing University, China), Wenwan Zhong (University of California, Riverside, USA) and Takuya Kubo (Kyoto University, Japan).
This collection will welcome review articles and primary research on the following topics:
The submission deadline for this collection is November 30th 2020.
However, we are very aware of the challenges faced by researchers as COVID-19 continues to affect the world, and we will be very flexible with this deadline. Please do let us know if you’d like to be involved, even if you suspect the deadline above may be unachievable.
If you are interested in submitting to this collection, please contact the Analytical Methods Editorial Office at methods-rsc@rsc.org.
Please note that all submitted manuscripts will be subject to peer review in accordance with the journal’s normal standards. Articles included in the collection will be published as they are accepted and collected into an online collection.
Analytical Methods is very pleased to announce the appointment of our newest Associate Editor, Wendell Coltro.
Wendell K. T. Coltro obtained his BSc in Chemistry from the State University 
of Maringá (2002). He received his MSc (2004) and Ph.D. (2008) in Analytical Chemistry from the University of São Paulo (in the Institute of Chemistry at São Carlos under the supervision of Professor Emanuel Carrilho. In 2006, he was a visiting scholar at The University of Kansas (USA) under the supervision of Professor Sue Lunte. He is currently Associate Professor and Director of Chemistry at the Federal University of Goiás, Brazil. In the beginning of 2018, he was nominated as affiliate member of the Brazilian Academy of Science as a young researcher. His research interests involve the development of electrophoresis chips, electrochemical sensors, toner- and paper-based devices as well as 3D printed microfluidic chips for applications in bioanalytical and forensic chemistry.
Read some of Wendell’s recent Analytical Methods publications below. Free to read* until August 17th 2020.
DOI: 10.1039/C8AY00795K
Anal. Methods, 2018,10, 2875-2880
Recent advances in toner-based microfluidic devices for bioanalytical applications
DOI: 10.1039/C8AY01095A
Anal. Methods, 2018,10, 2952-2962
DOI: 10.1039/C9AY01301F
Anal. Methods, 2019,11, 4875-4881
Submit your best articles to Wendell now!
*Free to read with an RSC Publishing account
We would like to highlight the Outstanding Reviewers for Analytical Methods in 2019, as selected by the editorial team, for their significant contribution to the journal. The reviewers have been chosen based on the number, timeliness and quality of the reports completed over the last 12 months.
We would like to say a big thank you to those individuals listed here as well as to all of the reviewers that have supported the journal. Each Outstanding Reviewer will receive a certificate to give recognition for their significant contribution.
Dr Christopher Baker, University of Tennessee, ORCID: 0000-0001-9134-2994
Dr Xiaodong Bi, Hebei University of Chinese Medicine, ORCID: 0000-0002-3795-2131
Professor Qiong Jia, Jilin University, ORCID: 0000-0002-0020-4180
Professor Antonio Molina-Diaz, University of Jaen, ORCID: 0000-0003-2380-192X
Dr Lin-Ru Xu, China Pharmaceutical University, ORCID: 0000-0002-3646-4128
Dr Minghui Yang, Central South University, ORCID: 0000-0002-7612-8137
Dr Zhiyun Zhang, University of Massachusetts, ORCID: 0000-0002-5944-4429
We would also like to thank the Analytical Methods board and the analytical chemistry community for their continued support of the journal, as authors, reviewers and readers.
If you would like to become a reviewer for our journal, just email us with an application form and an up-to-date CV or résumé. You can find more details in our author and reviewer resource centre.
We are delighted to introduce our latest Analytical Methods Emerging Investigator, Ashu Agarwal.
Ashu Agarwal is an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Associate Director of the Dr. John T Macdonald Foundation Biomedical Nanotechnology Institute at the University of Miami. His undergraduate degree from Indian Institute of Technology, and his PhD from University of Florida are both in Materials Science and Engineering. He then gathered postdoctoral research experience in Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University, and at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University. The mission of his Physiomimetic Microsystems Laboratory at the University of Miami is to develop human relevant organ mimic platforms for discovery of therapies and drugs, for modeling of disease states, for conducting mechanistic studies, and for differentiation, maturation and evaluation of stem cells. The lab is supported by multiple NIH consortium grants, early stage commercialization grants from Wallace H. Coulter Foundation, and a sponsored research project from Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals.
Read Ashu’s Emerging Investigator Series paper ‘Integrated platform for operating and interrogating organs-on-chips‘ and find out more about him in the interview below.
1. Your recent Emerging Investigator Series paper focuses on an integrated platform for the operation and interrogation of organs-on-a-chip. How has your research evolved from your first article to this most recent article?
My graduate work focused on developing nanorobots from biomolecular motors (kinesin) and associated filaments (microtubules). It led to very cool science and good quality papers. I started developing organ on chip applications during my postdoc at Harvard. The first article from my own research lab described a strategy to develop large volume fluidic chips constructed from inert plastic materials (completely PDMS-free) that are reversibly sealed, and ideally suited for organoid and spheroid cultures (Lab on a Chip, 2017, 17, 772 – 781). The article was highlighted as cover and selected as ‘top hot’ article based on peer-review scores. This recent article (Analytical Methods, 2019, 11, 5645 – 5651) describes the development of the hardware ecosystem that a user often needs to operate organ chips. While designing robust organ chips for culturing organoids/spheroids/islets is a major thrust area in my lab, it also important to remove barriers to operate and interrogate those chips using integrated hardware control systems.
2. What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment?
Through two recent awards from the NIH, we are embarking on creating human relevant models of two very different diseases: replicating the human islet-immune interactions that lead to type 1 diabetes, and phenotyping the circulating tumor cells and exosomes that lead to metastatic dissemination of breast cancer.
3. In your opinion, what are the key design considerations for developing effective platforms for simple operation of organs-on-a-chip?
Often, hooking up organ chips to pumps, valves and switches at the inflow, and effluent fraction collectors at the outflow, becomes an impediment to the adoption of chip technology by disease biology labs or pharmaceutical industry. An integrated fluid handling platform with associated computer program should help remove those barriers. In addition, an effective fluid platform would also allow integration with imaging platforms, easy connection and detachment of the chip, and reversible access to biological constructs.
4. What do you find most challenging about your research?
Finding the balance between over-designing features (a common engineering trap in academic labs), and not embedding enough functionality for the technology to be useful for the intended end-users.
5. How do you spend your spare time?
I love reading non-fiction, usually biographies, or stories/case-studies of companies and institutions.
6. Which profession would you choose if you were not a scientist?
I never thought I would be a scientist. Either a heavy machinery operator, or an offensive linemen, or an entrepreneur. Hopefully, none of those options are still off the table!
7. Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?
Create a microenvironment where innovation is celebrated. Keep telling your troops that they can achieve anything they set their minds to; because they often can.
2020 Advances in Measurement Science Lectureship Winner
Analytical Methods would like to congratulate our Associate Editor, Professor Zhen Liu (Nanjing University, China), on being selected as one of the 2020 Advances in Measurement Science Lectureship winners. The prize will be presented to him at Pittcon conference in Chicago, March 1st – 5th, 2020.
Zhen is Distinguished Professor at Nanjing University, China. He obtained his PhD from Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Academy of Sciences of China in 1998. After post-doctoral training at Hyogo University (former Himeji Institute of Technology) in Japan as a JPSP scholar (2000-2002) and at the University of Waterloo in Canada (2002-2005), he joined Nanjing University as a Full Professor in 2005. He was appointed as Adjunct Professor at the University of Waterloo (2011-2014). He was awarded the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (2014). His research interests include separation science, affinity materials, molecular imprinting, bioassays, single cell analysis, hyphenated analytical approaches, and nanomaterials for cancer therapy. He is particularly interested in integrating multidisciplinary knowledge, expertise and skills to overcome challenges in life science, such as disease diagnosis and cancer therapy.
Please join us in congratulating Zhen on this achievement!
We are delighted to announce the launch of a new themed collection on emerging contaminants, guest edited by Analytical Methods Associate Editor Fiona Regan (Dublin City University), Leon Barron (King’s College London) and Sara Castiglioni (Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri).
Emerging contaminants are pollutants of growing concern. They are mainly organic compounds such as: pesticides, pharmaceuticals and personal care products, hormones, plasticizers, food additives, wood preservatives, laundry detergents, surfactants, disinfectants, flame retardants, and other organic compounds that were found recently in natural wastewater stream generated by human and industrial activities.
We invite primary research and review content focusing on analytical methods that can be used for sampling and pre-treatment for chemicals of concern, chromatographic and other separation methods, including high resolution screening, mass spectrometry for unknowns in samples, and also new column applications.
We acknowledge that current monitoring methods are infrequent and therefore new methods for measurement of CECs are being developed. These methods include chemical sensors and biosensors as well as passive sampling methods. This themed issue also invites papers on real applications to environmental (water, air, soil) and other samples (biological, micro plastics) to demonstrate the widespread occurrence of these chemicals and the challenges in addressing sample matrix analytically. A growing drive to develop effect based methods is emerging and the challenge of quantifying and addressing chemical cocktails will provide interest to the Analytical Methods audience also.
If you are interested in submitting to this collection, please contact the Analytical Methods Editorial Office.
Submission deadline: 30th November 2020
However if you feel you are unable to meet this deadline due to Covid-19 but are still interested in submitting to the collection please do let us know. We’re very happy to be flexible with deadlines during these unprecedented times.
Articles included in this collection will be published as they are accepted, and collated into an online collection. Please note all submitted manuscripts will be subject to peer review in accordance with the journal’s normal standards.
Read papers in our sister journals Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts and Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology on the topic of PFAS: rsc.li/pfas
