Guide to the 30th International Symposium on Chromatography (ISC 2014)

The 30th annual International Symposium on Chromatography (ISC) will take place from the 14th – 18th September in Salzburg, Austria. It is not the first time Austria has hosted the event, with a very successful occasion being chaired by Professor J. F. K. Huber back in 1988. This year, the Symposium will welcome speakers and attendees from all over the globe to learn and share ideas on all aspects of chromatography.

The motto of the event will be “Communicating Separation Science for the Future” and will focus on both gas chromatography (GC) and liquid chromatography (LC), as well as capillary electrophoresis (CE). Furthermore, special emphasis will be placed this year on mass spectrometry (MS) techniques, and their integration and hyphenation with the ones mentioned above (GC-MS, LC-MS and CE-MS).

It is the goal of ISC 2014 to unite chromatography experts and practitioners from all over the globe and from all aspects of the industry.

Therefore, keynote speakers from all areas of the science have been invited to lecture, including both laboratory-based scientists and factory-based industrialists. There will, of course, be a strong European contingent among the speakers, but there will also be guests from all over the world, including the United States, Australia, China, Japan, South America and Russia. The idea is to have all viewpoints represented in one single place, making knowledge sharing as easy and convenient as possible.

Concerning one of the main focuses of the event, mass spectrometry, the distinguished speakers will include, among others: 

• Jeremy Nicholson, who will discuss how MS can be applied to clinical analysis 
• Gerald Hopfgartner, who will explore how ion-mobility MS can unlock new areas of interest in metabolomics
•  Hans Maurer, who will elucidate on the challenges and potential benefits of high-res MS in forensic toxicological studies 

Plus many, many more. With such a wide array of speakers covering a huge range of topics, the conference hopes to educate and inform on all aspects of chromatography, bringing a more ordered (as well as personal) touch to the staggering amount of raw information we know about chromatography and that is fortunately widely available on the internet, albeit in a scattered and disorganised form.

One of the chairpersons of the conference, revered chromatography expert Professor Wolfgang Lindner, took time out of his busy schedule to talk to Chromatography Today about his life, his work and the upcoming ISC 2014. The result was the informative and eye-opening interview, Professor Wolfgang Lindner - In Conversation with Chromatography Today.