Awards
The Awards Committee of the Council for Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (CNIRS) is pleased to announce the following award winners:
The Birth Award
The CNIRS is proud to announce that this year’s winner of the Gerald S. Birth Award for best work in diffuse spectroscopy published in 2010 to 2011 is Dr. Michael (Micky) Myrick. Dr. Myrick has worked on the development of an instrument for imaging forensic samples in the thermal infrared. The work is detailed in a series of 3 papers titled "Multimode Imaging in the Thermal Infrared for Chemical Contrast Enhancement". The three papers were published back-to-back in Analytical Chemistry (2010) 82: 8412-8420, 8421-8426 and 8427-8431. Part 1 described the instrumentation and methodology, Part 2 reported on simulation-driven design and Part 3 described how blood could be visualized on fabrics. The papers were co-authored with Heather Brooke, Megan R. Baranowski, Jessica N. McCutcheon and Stephen L. Morgan. The award, lecture and symposium will be presented at the 16th International Conference on Diffuse Reflectance (IDRC) at Chambersburg, PA August 2012. The award includes a trophy and honorarium sponsored by Unity Scientific, Inc.
Michael Myrick received a B.S. degree in Chemistry at the North Carolina State University and was awarded his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry at New Mexico State University for his work on energetics and dynamics of metal excited states. He was a postdoctoral associate of S. Michael Angel at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory working on analytical spectroscopy applications. In 1991 he moved to the University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, where he was promoted to Associate Professor in 1997 and Professor of Chemistry in 2003. He has been a visiting scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory from 1995 to the present.
Dr. Myrick is the author of more than 160 peer-reviewed or invited publications and invented multivariate optical computing. His patents in this area were licensed to Ometric Corporation, a startup company in Columbia S.C. in 2005. Ometric was sold in early 2011 to Halliburton Energy Services in Houston. He also currently serves as the President of the Coblentz Society for Vibrational Spectroscopy.
The Gerald S. Birth Award for an outstanding publication describing 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. Dr. Birth also made many contributions to instrument technology related to diffuse reflection. It is fitting that the Birth Award this year is conferred upon Dr. Michael Myrick, who also has a deep interest in developing and using new techniques for spectroscopic measurements, as an aid to forensic science.
This year, the awards session will be held on Thursday morning, August 2nd. See you then!
IDRC Travel Fellowships
The CNIRS is proud to announce this year’s winners of the Travel Awards in support of attending the 16th International Diffuse Reflectance Conference at Chambersburg, PA -29-July to 3-August 2012. This year three students will receive up to $1000 each for travel expenses plus registration for the conference, which includes room and board at the Conference venue, Wilson College. The students have submitted statements of why they would like to attend the Conference, and they will present posters of their work.
Iyas Aldib is in the Ph.D. program at the Faculty of Pharmacy at ULB, Brussels, Belgium. He is working on the rational drug design in studies of myeloperoxidase inhibition . He did studies using NIR in homogeneity tests of bulk products of vitamins B1,B6 B12 prepared for granulation as indicator of process validation in post-master degree work at Damascus University, Syria. Other experience includes managing his own pharmacy after completing a 5-year degree in pharmaceutical chemistry and pharmacy at Damascus University.
Nanning Cao is in the Ph.D. program at the Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering at Iowa State University. Prof. Charles Hurburgh is her advisor. Her Ph.D. research involves measuring grain quality using NIR spectroscopy. She obtained her Master Degree at College of Food Science and Nutritional Engineering, China Agricultural University. Nanning worked to provide food service at the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008. She was a research assistant in a project discriminating reconstructed milk and adulterated milk at the Henan Provincial Center for Dairy Engineering & Research, Henan, China.
Stefan Alexander Schoenbichler is a Ph.D. student in the Analytical and Radiochemistry Department, University of Innsbruck, Austria, where he has also completed a 5-year program in Pharmacy. His wide background includes working in real estate management and the electrician trade.
The Travel Awards are supported by the CNIRS. The Council congratulates the winners of the Travel Awards and we look forward to their participation in the IDRC-2012.
2012 Tomas Hirschfeld Award (presented at IDRC)
ICNIRS and Buchi NIRS Solutions are pleased to announce that the winner of the 2012 Tomas Hirschfeld Award is David Burns.
Dr. Burns received his B.Sc. (Chemistry/Mathematics) from the University of Puget Sound in 1979. He obtained his Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from the University of Washington in 1984. After an NIH post-doctoral fellowship in Bioengineering, he was appointed a Research Assistant Professor in Bioengineering at the University of Washington. He was promoted to Research Associate Professor in 1993. Later in 1993, he joined the Department of Chemistry and Experimental Medicine at McGill University. He is presently a Professor of Chemistry and Experimental Medicine. He was the Medical Device Director and Scientific Director for the NCE funded Inspiraplex from 1998-2002. For six years (2002-2008) he served as Associate Dean (Research and Graduate Education) for the Faculty of Science.
Professor Burns’ research is focused on providing a fundamental understanding and tools for quantitative, spatially-resolved measurements in highly scattering media such as tissue. He has co-authored over 100 publications and 15 patents in the area. His work has received recognition such as, the Barringer Award, Spectroscopy Society of Canada in 1999, the McBryde Medal, Chemical Society of Canada in 2000, Gerald S. Birth Award, Council for Near-Infrared Spectroscopy in 2010, Fessenden Professorship in 2011. He was elected a Fellow of the Canadian Institute of Chemistry in 2000.
Several aspects of Dr. Burns’ work have led to intellectual property. In particular, a core platform technology was developed for near infrared spectroscopic assessment of (1) Lung edema, (2) in vivo lactate, (3) Fetal/Maternal Health from Amniotic Fluid, (4) Embryo Viability assessment from culture fluid, and (5) oxidative stress Assessment of Neurodegenerative Disease from Blood. These five core patents formed the bases of a McGill Start-up company, Molecular Biometrics, LLC, in 2005. Dr. Burns was Chief Scientific Officer for the company from 2005-2008. Another innovation has formed the basis of a new McGill company, Leap Medical, in 2009 for non-invasive assessments of head trauma.
Professor Burns’ current research deals with fundamental aspects of bioinformatics, non-invasive near-infrared assessment of health and development of smart polymer nanosensors with applications to water/soil quality analysis and the point of care, biotechnology/biomedical fields.
BUCHI Young Scientists NIR Award
The 2011 prize had been awarded to Manel Alcala Bernardez from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain. He received the prize for his work “Quality by Design Approach of a Pharmaceutical Gel Manufacturing Process, Part 1: Determination of the Design Space".
The BUCHI Young Scientists NIRAward is awarded to young scientists, who have worked during their diploma or doctoral thesis in the field of near-infrared spectroscopy achieving outstanding results. The contributions will be judged by an international jury of recognised experts. (http://www.buchi.com/BUCHI-NIRAward.636.0.html)