# Top 20 Richard Smith
The Power List 2021
Chief Scientist and a Battelle Fellow in the Biological Sciences Division, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, USA
Controversial opinion? With the power and flexibility of IMS approaches, and other ion manipulations, such as those possible with SLIM (particularly extended ion storage and reactions), I believe the use of relatively slow liquid phase chromatography separations will be increasingly displaced. In some cases LC may be used for off-line fractionation, but in many others it will become unnecessary.
In another life… I’d be working with a new technology of some sort. I am a hopeless technophile, and love problem solving – I’m endlessly fascinated by the challenges involved in everything from robotics to constructing a quantum computer.
