awards
The Awards Committee of the Council for Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (CNIRS) is pleased to announce the following award winners:
The Birth Award:
Professor David Burns of McGill University
The CNIRS is proud to announce this year’s winner of the Gerald S. Birth Award for best published work in 2008-2009 is Dr. David H. Burns. He works in the areas of chemometrics and the spectroscopy of living systems, and his time-of-flight spectroscopic measurements of the human body are ground-breaking. He is receiving the award for his publication, “A portable multi-wavelength near infrared photon time-offlight instrument for measuring light scattering,” published in JNIRS 17, 167-176, 2009, with Francis W.L. Esmonde-White as co-author. The award and the award lecture will be presented at the 15th International Conference on Diffuse Reflectance (IDRC) at Chambersburg, PA August 2010. The award includes a trophy and honorarium sponsored by Unity Scientific, Inc.
David Burns received a B.S. degree at the University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, WA and was awarded his Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry at the U. of Washington, Seattle for his work in multispectral analysis in Chemistry. He advanced at the U of W from Research Fellow to Assistant and then Associate Professor. In 1993 he moved to McGill University Department of Chemistry, where he has served as Assistant, Associate and full Professor. In 1994 he was made Associate Member of the Department of Experimental Medicine. He served as Associate Dean of Research for the Faculty of Science from 2002 to 2008.
David Burns is the author of more than 100 peer-reviewed or invited publications, has contributed chapters to 7 books, and is the holder of 20 patents and inventions. He has won numerous awards, including the Barringer Award from the Spectroscopy Society of Canada and the McBryde Medal from the Chemical Society of Canada.
The Gerald S. Birth Award for outstanding innovation in diffuse reflection or diffuse transmission spectroscopy is conferred by the CNIRS and sponsored by Unity Scientific Corp. in memory of Gerald Birth. The late Dr. Birth was the founder of the IDRC, now sponsored by the CNIRS. He also made many contributions to the instrument technology related to diffuse reflectance. It is fitting that Birth Award this year is conferred upon Dr. David Burns, who also has a deep interest in developing and using new techniques for spectroscopic measurements, as an aid to medical research and diagnosis.
IDRC Travel Fellowships:
2010 TOMAS HIRSCHFELD AWARD (presented at IDRC):
ICNIRS and Buchi NIRS Solutions are pleased to announce that the winner of the 2010 Tomas Hirschfeld Award is Jim Reeves.
Jim Reeves received his B.S degree in Chemistry in 1970 from the University of Maryland (With Honors), his PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Maryland in 1975 and a B.S. degree in Computer Science in 1984 from the University College of the University of Maryland.
Jim has spent his entire career at the Agricultural Research Service of the US Department of Agriculture and started at the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center in 1978 working on the composition of ruminant feedstuffs. His introduction to near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) came in 1984 when he starting working with Dr. Timothy Blosser who using NIRS for forage and silage analysis. When Dr. Blosser left a few years later, Jim took over the NIRS work and continued studies on animal feedstuffs. While physically remaining at the same location, both the name of the lab (Ruminant Nutrition Laboratory) and direction of the laboratory changed gradually over a period of 15 years from ruminant feedstuffs to ruminant wastes and eventually to more generally ruminant effects on the environment (Presently the laboratory is the Environmental Management and Byproducts Utilization Laboratory). Thus, Jim's research has moved from what the cow eats (front end) to waste production (the back end) to waste disposal (the soil). Jim is also presently part of the Hydrology and Remote Sensing Laboratory at Beltsville.
Jim has authored or co-authored over 125 peer reviewed publications, with thesis, book chapters, etc. increasing the total to nearly 200 non-abstract publications. He was the chairman of the 8 th International Diffuse Reflectance Conference (Chambersburg, PA, 1996), is presently the North American Editor for NIR News, serves on the Editorial Boards of The Open Spectroscopy and Open Agriculture Journals and The Journal of Analytical and Applied Pyrolysis, has taught courses on NIR spectroscopy in the United States, Italy, Mexico and Brazil and routinely reviews spectroscopically (near- and/or mid-infrared) oriented papers on subjects ranging from pharmaceuticals and foods to animal feeds, hydrology, grains, soils and remote sensing.
Present research interests are concentrated in three main areas: 1. the application of spectroscopy for the rapid determination of soil composition. This includes the investigation and evaluation of both different spectral ranges (visible, near-infrared and mid-infrared), sample presentation methods (diffuse reflectance, fiber-optics, etc.) and spectroscopic methodology (proximate versus remote sensing) to find the most efficient and economically method for the rapid determination of soil carbon content for carbon sequestration. 2. Chemometrics, specifically transfer of methods developed by the NIRS community using bench top spectrometers to the area of remote sensing and also the development of more rapid methods for development and automatic evaluation of calibrations. 3. The development of methods for the evaluation of feedstocks for Biochar and biofuel production at the farm level. Finally, an ongoing interest throughout Jim's carrier has been how the reference methods used in agriculture influence the spectroscopic calibrations upon which so much time is spend developing and upon which so much may depend, e.g. carbon credits for carbon sequestration as measured by remote or proximate spectroscopic methods.