JAAS News

The Gordon F. Kirkbright bursary award is a prestigious annual award that assists a promising early career scientist of any nation to attend a recognised scientific meeting or visit a place of learning. The fund for this bursary was established in 1985 as a memorial to Professor Gordon Kirkbright in recognition of his contributions to analytical spectroscopy and to science in general.

Owing to the generosity of one of our former trustees, an eminent atomic spectroscopist, Professor Edward B.M. Steers, we are now, from 2020, in the position of being able to award an annual Edward Steers bursary, in addition to the long standing Gordon Kirkbright bursary, to similarly assist a promising early scientist engaged in or utilising analytical spectroscopic techniques.

The ABS Trust defines early career as being either a student, or an employee in a non-tenured academic post or in industry, within 7 years of award of PhD excluding career breaks. The same conditions apply to each bursary.

Applications are invited for both the 2021 Gordon Kirkbright Bursary and the 2021 Edward Steers Bursary. Although both funds are administered by the ABS Trust, the Kirkbright award is not restricted to spectroscopists, but is open to all involved with or utilising analytical science-based techniques.

Application Forms can be downloaded via:

http://www.abstrust.org/kirkbright-and-steers-bursary-awards

or for further information visit:

http://www.abstrust.org/ or contact abstrustuk@gmail.com

The closing date for entries is 30 November 2020.

We are delighted to announce George L. Donati as the recipient of the JAAS Emerging Investigator Lectureship 2020. This Lectureship aims to recognise and support an emerging scientist working in the area of atomic spectrometry in the early stages of their independent career.

Introducing George L. Donati, Wake Forest University, USA:

George L. Donati obtained his M.Sc. in Analytical Chemistry from the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar, Brazil, 2004), and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Wake Forest University (WFU, USA, 2010), where he received The American Institute of Chemists’ Outstanding Graduate Student Award. During his postdoctoral fellowship at UFSCar, George contributed to the development of the interference standard method (IFS). He is currently an Associate Research Professor at the Department of Chemistry of Wake Forest University, in Winston-Salem, NC, where he developed the methods of multi-energy calibration (MEC), multi-isotope calibration (MICal), multispecies calibration (MSC) and multi-flow calibration (MFC), and contributed to developing the standard dilution analysis method (SDA). George has supervised three Ph.D. students and several undergraduate students at WFU. He is a member of the editorial advisory board of the Microchemical Journal, has published more than 80 peer-review papers and 3 book chapters, and has given more than 10 talks in international conferences. His research at WFU focus on the development of portable instrumentation and novel calibration methods for spectrochemical analysis, as well as the use of atomic spectrometry and advanced statistical tools to diagnose and understand diseases.