Professor Gary Horlick
We are sad to report that Professor Emeritus Gary Horlick of the University of Alberta passed away on Thursday, November 1. For over 50 years, Gary Horlick was a leader in the field of atomic spectrometry, contributing to this field with many elegant experiments and a sharp interpretive insight. He will be remembered as a great teacher, mentor, colleague, and friend. – Steve Ray
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. You can read about the previous winner here.
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
The lectureship is open worldwide to researchers working in atomic spectrometry within the scope of JAAS who are at an early stage of their independent career. The nominee has to be under ten years* from gaining their PhD and those who hold a senior permanent position are not eligible for the award. (*Appropriate consideration will be given to those who have taken a career break or followed a different study path.) The nominee should also have a level of engagement with the journal JAAS and be a published author in it.
Nominations
Nominations must be received by the Editorial Office by February 28th 2019; researchers cannot nominate themselves and members of the Editorial Board judging panel are not eligible to receive the lectureship.
Nominations must include:
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 a letter of recommendation, nominee biography and publication list no later than February 28th 2019.
For any queries, please contact the Editorial Office at jaas-rsc@rsc.org.
Bernhard Welz (photo by Jorg Feldmann)
I am very saddened to report that last Saturday (June 2), Dr. Bernhard Welz passed away, after severe complications, as consequence of a car accident. Bernhard was cremated last Sunday in Florianópolis (Brazil), the city in which he chose to live for the last 20 years.
Born in Augsburg (Germany), Bernhard was without any doubt one of the driving figures in the development of atomic absorption. As a young doctor, he started doing research in what was then a very new field, when he joined Perkin Elmer in 1967. After more than 30 years working for such company, Bernhard, instead of opting for a peaceful retirement, decided to adventure overseas and became Visiting Professor at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, in Florianópolis. And so Bernhard became Bernardo, and started a new life, meeting his wife and co-worker, Maria. His presence and example invigorated atomic spectrometry in Brazil, to the point that it is one of the leading countries in the field now.
Bernhard was tireless and very active until the very end, traveling to conferences all over the world, and presenting his unique work. It is hard to resume his contribution to the field or overestimate his enormous impact. His work for the last 20 years focused on the development of high-resolution continuum source AAS/MAS, but that is only one of his many achievements. His “Bible” on Atomic Absorption Spectrometry, wrote together with M. Sperling in the last edition, still is the reference book in the field. And let’s not forget that he started organizing several successful conferences, such as the Rio Symposium on Atomic Spectrometry, or the German CANAS.
I remember reading his papers (his series on the use of palladium and magnesium nitrate as a universal modifier is certainly noteworthy) as a young Ph.D. student, meeting him as a young post-doc, and becoming his colleague and friend later on, as a not so young scientist. Bernhard was a true giant, and it was a privilege to share time with him, both personally and scientifically. He will be sorely missed, but his legacy certainly remains. A life well-lived, Bernardo. Rest in peace and many thanks!
Martín Resano
Chair of the JAAS Editorial Board
We are delighted to announce the appointment of four new members to the JAAS Advisory Board. All four of our new members have been recipients of JAAS Emerging Investigator Lectureships in recent years. 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.
Lara Lobo, Oviedo University, Spain
Lara Lobo was one of two winners of the 2015 JAAS Emerging Investigator Lectureship, launched to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of the journal. Read Lara’s recent critical review article on depth profile analysis with glow discharge spectrometry here.
Gerardo Gamez, Texas Tech University, USA
Gerardo Gamez was one of two winners of the 2015 JAAS Emerging Investigator Lectureship, launched to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of the journal. Check out Garardo’s article on compressed sensing spectral imaging for plasma optical emission spectroscopy here.
Sohail Mushtaq, University of Bristol, UK
Sohail Mushtaq was the recipient of the 2016 JAAS Emerging Investigator Lectureship. Read Sohail’s article on “The production of doubly charged sample ions by “charge transfer and ionization” (CTI) in analytical GD-MS” featured in the journal’s fifth Young Analytical Scientists issue.
Márcia Mesko, Federal University of Pelotas, Brazil
Márcia Foster Mesko was the recipient of the 2018 JAAS Emerging Investigator Lectureship. Read her contribution to the recent Young Analytical Scientist Issue of the journal titled “Sample preparation of lipstick for further Cd and Pb determination by ICP-MS: is the use of complexing acids really necessary?”
JAAS is guided by an international Editorial Board and Advisory Board – more information on our board members can be found on our website. We welcome the knowledge and expertise our four new Advisory Board members will bring to the journal and we very much look forward to working with them. Welcome to the JAAS team!
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. (We define 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 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. Although the fund is administered by the Association of British Spectroscopists (ABS) Trust, the award is not restricted to spectroscopists, but is open to all involved with or utilising analytical science-based techniques.
Applications are invited for the 2019 Gordon Kirkbright Bursary.
An Application Form can be downloaded from:
http://www.abstrust.org/kirkirkbright-bursary-award-application-form
or for further information visit:
http://www.abstrust.org/, or contact abstrustuk@gmail.com
The closing date for entries is 30 November 2018.
Marcia Foster Mesko
We are delighted to announce Márcia Foster Mesko as the recipient of the JAAS Emerging Investigator Lectureship 2018. 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 Márcia Foster Mesko, Federal University of Pelotas, Brazil:
Márcia Foster Mesko was born in Canguçu city, Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil. She concluded her PhD in Chemistry at Federal University of Santa Maria, Brazil, in 2008, and has been an Associate Professor at Federal University of Pelotas (UFPel), Brazil, since 2009. Currently, she is the Deputy Director of the Analytical Chemistry Division of the Brazilian Chemical Society, Coordinator of the Chemistry Committee at the Foundation for Supporting Research of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil (FAPERGS), and also Coordinator of the Biochemistry and Bioprospecting Postgraduate Program at UFPel. She has supervised 10 master and 2 PhD students, has presented at several conferences in national and international scientific meetings and has received more than 15 national and international awards, including the L’Oreal Brazil (Young Woman in Science, Brazilian Academy of Science, UNESCO). She has published 80 peer-reviewed international papers, 15 national and international book chapters and 4 patents of innovation. She has experience in analytical chemistry for the development of methods for atomic spectrometry, sample preparation, food and environmental analysis, speciation analysis, and quality control of pharmaceutical and other industrial products.
We are delighted to announce the winner of the 2018 JAAS Emerging Investigator Lectureship. This Lectureship was launched to recognise and support an emerging scientist working in the area of atomic spectrometry in the early stages of their independent career and we received many exceptional and highly deserving nominations this year.
Congratulations to Márcia Mesko, Federal University of Pelotas, Brazil!
Lectureship award details
As a winner of the lectureship, Márcia will be able to present her research at a relevant high-profile international meeting and receive a contribution of £2000 to cover associated travel and accommodation costs. She will be awarded a certificate and invited to contribute a paper to JAAS.
You can read more about the selection process in the call for nominations post.
We will be posting more information about our winner soon!
We would like to highlight the Outstanding Reviewers for JAAS in 2017, 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.
Professor Pawel Pohl, Wroclaw University of Technology, ORCID: 0000-0003-1844-7188
Dr Dmitriy Malinovskiy, LGC limited, ORCID: 0000-0002-7055-2359
Dr Zhe Wang, Tsinghua University, ORCID: 0000-0001-6857-7672
Dr Joaquim Nobrega, Universidade Federal de Sao Carlos, ORCID: 0000-0001-9134-9547
Dr Erico Flores, Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, ORCID: 0000-0001-9785-2477
Professor Jose-Luis Todoli, Universitat d’Alacant, ORCID: 0000-0002-9151-7050
Dr Gregory Eiden, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, ORCID: 0000-0001-8182-7357
Professor Michael Webb, University of North Carolina Wilmington, ORCID: 0000-0003-4762-2555
Dr Andreas Limbeck, Vienna University of Technology, ORCID: 0000-0001-5042-2445
Dr Gábor Galbács, University of Szeged, ORCID: 0000-0002-1799-5329
We would also like to thank the JAAS board and the atomic spectroscopy 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 details of your research interests and an up-to-date CV or résumé. You can find more details in our author and reviewer resource centre
Professor Edward Steers
We are saddened to report that Professor Edward Steers of the London Metropolitan University has passed away. Edward was a major figure in glow discharge spectrometry and he was widely respected and admired for his keen scientific insight and encyclopaedic knowledge, and he was universally loved as a genuine and wonderful individual.
While this is indeed sad news, let us remember that Edward reached a fine age and worked for over 60 years on a topic that he loved. And he inspired many young researchers to concentrate on the field of Glow Discharge. He will be missed. – Pete Robinson.
The 2018 Winter Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry is being held on January 8th – January 13th 2018 on Amelia Island, Florida, USA
The biennial Winter Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry is sponsored by the ICP Information Newsletter, Inc., a non-profit research organisation located in Hadley, Massachusetts and Lehigh Acres, Florida, and organised by Dr Ramon Barnes of the University Research Institute for Analytical Chemistry.
The 2018 Winter Conference explores the most recent applications, developments, fundamentals, and research achieved with analytical plasma sources including glow discharges, inductively coupled plasmas, laser sources, and microwave discharges for elemental trace and ultra-trace, stable isotope, and elemental speciation analyses.
This conference is the 20th in a series of biennial meetings featuring developments in chemical analysis employing electrical discharge sources known as “plasma spectrochemistry”. More than 500 international scientists are expected to attend with 300 invited and contributed presentations and 50 professional development short training courses being offered. The meeting will take place at the Omni Amelia Island Plantation Resort on Amelia Island, Florida.
The pre-registration deadline is October 13, 2017. The registration deadline is December 8, 2017. More information can be found online.
Philippa Hughes, Executive Editor of JAAS will be in attendance and JAAS will also be sponsoring two poster prizes this year – good luck to all of the entrants!
