JAAS News

We are delighted to announce David Clases as the recipient of the JAAS Emerging Investigator Lectureship 2025. 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 David Clases, University of Graz, Austria:

Professor David Clases

David Clases is an analytical scientist born in Paderborn, Germany. He completed his B.Sc. (2012), M.Sc. (2014), and PhD (2017) in Chemistry at the University of Münster under Professor Uwe Karst. After his doctorate, he received a DFG Fellowship and joined Professor Philip Doble’s group at the University of Technology Sydney, later becoming a lecturer in chemistry. In 2021, he returned to Europe to take up a tenure-track position at the University of Graz, Austria, where he founded and now leads the NanoMicroLab. Promoted to Associate Professor in 2024, he currently heads a team of eight researchers.

David is passionate about atomic spectroscopy, particularly ICP-MS in its many facets, ranging from fundamental principles and instrumentation to hyphenation with complementary techniques and real-world applications. His early work focused on LC-ICP-MS and LA-ICP-MS, while his current research centres on ICP-TOFMS and single particle approaches. His group develops new hyphenated techniques combining ICP-MS with orthogonal technologies such as optical traps and Raman spectroscopy to gain deeper insights into complex particulate systems.

With about 60 scientific articles published, his work has received broad recognition, including an ERC Starting Grant, the GDCh Analytical Chemistry Division Award, the ASAC Fritz Feigl Award, and the DGMS Mattauch-Herzog Award. He serves on the advisory boards of four journals and remains active as a reviewer, guest editor, and scientific committee member. His research has been featured at numerous international conferences through keynote and invited lectures, as well as short courses.

We are delighted to announce we are welcoming nominations for the next JAAS Emerging Investigator Lectureship. The Lectureship aims to recognise and support an emerging scientist working in the area of atomic spectrometry in the early stages of their independent career. Submission deadline 16^th June 2025.

Lectureship details
The recipient of the Lectureship will present their research at a relevant high-profile international meeting (to be agreed with the Editorial Office) and receive a contribution of £2000 to cover associated travel and accommodation costs. They will be awarded a certificate and asked to contribute a Primary Research or Review Article to JAAS.

Eligibility

To be eligible for the JAAS Lectureship, the candidate must:

• Have completed their PhD
• Have published in JAAS
• Be working in a research area within the scope of JAAS
• Be at an early stage of their independent career (typically this will be within 10 years of completing their PhD, but appropriate consideration will be given to those who have taken a career break or followed a different study path). Please contact the Editorial Office if you have any queries

Nominations

Nominations can be made by anyone and must be sent via email. Self-nominations are not permitted. All nominators will be asked to confirm that, to the best of their knowledge, their nominee’s professional standing is such that there is no confirmed or potential impediment to them receiving the Lectureship.

To nominate a candidate, please provide:

• A recommendation letter, including the name, contact details and website URL of the nominee
• A one-page CV for the nominee, including a summary of their education and career, a list of up to five of their top independent publications, total numbers of publications
• A one-page statement of achievement with a lay summary, written by the nominee describing their best accomplishments
• A supporting letter of recommendation from an independent referee. This could be for example the nominee’s post doc or PhD supervisor.

Selection

The Editorial Office will screen each nomination for eligibility and draw up a shortlist of candidates based on the nomination documents provided. The lectureship winner will be selected by the JAAS Editorial Board based on the based on the information provided in the letters of recommendation, candidate CV and statement of achievement.

Submit a nomination
To make a nomination please send the Editorial Office the requested documents by 16^th June 2025.

For any queries, please contact the Editorial Office at jaas-rsc@rsc.org.

We are delighted to announce we are welcoming nominations for the next JAAS Emerging Investigator Lectureship. The lectureship is awarded to recognise and support an emerging scientist working in the area of atomic spectrometry in the early stages of their independent career. Submission deadline 14^th June 2024.

Lectureship details
The recipient of the lectureship will present their research at a relevant high-profile international meeting (to be agreed with the Editorial Office) and receive a contribution of

£2000 to cover associated travel and accommodation costs. They will be awarded a certificate and asked to contribute a Primary Research or Review Article to JAAS.

Eligibility

To be eligible for the JAAS Lectureship, the candidate must:

• Have completed their PhD
• Have published in JAAS
• Be working in a research area within the scope of JAAS
• Be at an early stage of their independent career (typically this will be within 10 years of completing their PhD, but appropriate consideration will be given to those who have taken a career break or followed a different study path). Please contact the Editorial Office if you have any queries

Nominations

Nominations can be made by anyone and must be sent via email. Self-nominations are not permitted. All nominators will be asked to confirm that, to the best of their knowledge, their nominee’s professional standing is such that there is no confirmed or potential impediment to them receiving the Lectureship.

To nominate a candidate, please provide:

• A recommendation letter, including the name, contact details and website URL of the nominee
• A one-page CV for the nominee, including their date of birth, summary of education and career, a list of up to five of their top independent publications, total numbers of publications
• A one-page statement of achievement with a lay summary, written by the nominee describing their best accomplishments
• A supporting letter of recommendation from an independent referee. This could be for example the nominee’s post doc or PhD supervisor.

Selection

The Editorial Office will screen each nomination for eligibility and draw up a shortlist of candidates based on the nomination documents provided. The lectureship winner will be selected by the JAAS Editorial Board based on the originality, quality, impact and significance of the candidate’s research, as highlighted in their nomination.

Submit a nomination
To make a nomination please send the Editorial Office the requested documents by 14^th June 2024.

For any queries, please contact the Editorial Office at jaas-rsc@rsc.org.

Congratulations to Frank Vanhaecke, JAAS Editorial Board Member, who has won the 2023 Analytical Science open Prize: Theophilus Redwood Prize for the development of inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) based methodologies for elemental, isotopic and single-event analysis.

Frank Vanhaecke received a PhD from Ghent University in 1992. He carried out postdoctoral research at Ghent University and at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany. Currently, he is Senior Full Professor in Analytical Chemistry at Ghent University, where he also leads the ‘Atomic & Mass Spectrometry – A&MS’ research group that is specialized in the determination, speciation and isotopic analysis of (ultra)trace elements via ICP-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). His group studies fundamentally-oriented aspects of the technique and develops methods for solving challenging scientific problems in interdisciplinary contexts. Specific topics of research include 2-D and 3-D elemental mapping by means of laser ablation (LA) – ICP-MS, high-precision isotopic analysis using multi-collector ICP-MS and single-event (single-particle and single-cell) ICP-MS. Frank is (co)author of more than 400 papers in peer-reviewed journals. In 2011, he received a ‘European Plasma Spectrochemistry Award’, in 2013, he was designated ‘Fellow of the Society for Applied Spectroscopy – SAS’ and in 2017, he received the ‘Lester Strock Award’ from SAS. Frank has been the chair of the editorial board of JAAS from June 2012 to June 2016 and has returned as a board member in 2020.

Olivier Donard Elected to French National Academy of Sciences

JAAS is pleased to congratulate Olivier Donard, CNRS research director emeritus at the University of Pau and Pays de l’Adour and first director of IPREM laboratory, who was recently elected a member of the French National Academy of Sciences.

Olivier Donard studied analytical and environmental chemistry at the University of Bordeaux-I in France before becoming a lecturer at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, then completed a post-doctoral fellowship with the US Environmental Protection Agency and the National Science Foundation. He later became a CNRS research fellow and teacher at the University of Bordeaux-I.

Olivier Donard created the Laboratoire de Chimie Bioinorganique et Environnement (EP 132) in Pau in 1995, which in 2014 became the Institut des sciences analytiques et de physico-chimie pour l’environnement et les matériaux (IPREM), of which he was Director until 2017. From 2012 to 2020, he was also the director of the Mass Spectrometry for Reactivity and Speciation Sciences (MARSS) center, which is considered the largest mass spectrometry (speciation and isotope) center in Europe.

The French National Academy of Sciences provides a framework of expertise, advice and warning on the political, ethical and societal issues raised by science. The Academy of Sciences works to share science in order to enlighten citizens’ choices and formulates recommendations that can be used by government authorities. It also supports research, is committed to the quality of science education and promotes scientific life at the international level.