‘This conference is unique in that it starts with short courses’, explains Bob Pirok, associate professor at the University of Amsterdam. For students and scientists who are not familiar with the field, it is an opportunity to learn what they need to know to participate meaningfully in the conference. ‘There are several short courses, but I am doing two myself. One covers the basic skills of liquid chromatography, but the other is new: in it, I explore the merits and pitfalls of using AI in analytical chemistry.’

Pirok designed the latter short course with practical application in mind: ‘Unfortunately, I regularly see people and organisations who, for example, see that ChatGPT is very popular and then think they have to do something with it because they don’t want to miss out. But there are many reasons why some AI functions will not work at a fundamental level.’

Half a century

He offers a critical perspective without denying the usefulness of AI techniques. Pirok also goes into more depth in the regular programme. ‘I’m part of a session on automatic method development, in line with my main area of research’, he says. ‘We look at theories that are more than half a century old, for example. Despite the fact that they have been around for so long, no one is doing anything with them. This is because applying those theories and developing methods takes a considerable amount of time — and therefore money — and very few people have the resources to do that.’

One example is 2D liquid chromatography. It has been around for forty years and is a hundred times more powerful than regular LC, yet it is not routinely used due to the time it takes to develop a method. During his lecture, Pirok will explain how he creates algorithms that control a system in order to develop test methods that improve themselves.

Pirok will also be present at another new session about education. ‘My contribution is about a book that I have been writing with my former supervisor, Peter Schoenmakers, over the past two years on analytical separation methods. We found that we had to refer students to a variety of books and articles to cover the subject, and we wanted to improve on that.’

The non-profit book will be published just before the conference and will be available to purchase there. A website is linked to the book, offering free lectures and exercises to help readers work through it, enabling those without the opportunity to study (yet) to also delve into analytical chemistry.

Flash

Pirok is particularly looking forward to the sessions on multidimensional liquid chromatography, LCMS, and the separation of oligonucleotides. ‘The Industry Stories are also worth checking out. In these, people from industry talk about the challenges they face. You realise that, in practice, people aren’t always looking for new techniques; sometimes they just need help with or improvements to existing ones.’

The younger generation will also be featured. Pirok: ‘The Young Scientist Flash Presentations are a good example of how you can convey your message more powerfully and succinctly than in the longer presentations, even if you don’t go into as much depth. Then there are the huge poster sessions, which I’m really looking forward to. You really get to see the work of students who are doing much more exciting things than scientists who have been working in the same field of research for years. You learn a lot from that.’