Davy Guillarme
Senior Lecturer and Research Associate, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Geneva, Switzerland
An inspirational leader?In my view, one of the most charismatic leaders in the field of analytical sciences is Professor Pat Sandra. Throughout his career, he has skilfully juggled his work as a university professor with the creation of the Research Institute in Chromatography (RIC), which now has several dozen employees. Throughout his career, Professor Sandra has studied both fundamental aspects of the analytical sciences and much more practical aspects. I believe that this balance between fundamental and applied work is very important to carry out research that is useful to as many people as possible.
Biggest challenge facing the field? One of the biggest challenges facing analysts today is data processing. With today's much more powerful, faster and more sensitive instruments, we are faced with a veritable tsunami of data that we need to be able to process quickly so that this stage does not become the bottleneck of analytical methods. The new generation of scientists is much better prepared for data analysis, whereas scientists who graduated in the 20th century sometimes feel overwhelmed in this area. Indeed, this science is evolving very rapidly, and this trend is likely to accelerate with the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Book for scientists?A reference book for me is "Introduction to Modern Liquid Chromatography" written by some of the most renowned chromatographists, Snyder, Kirkland and Dolan. This book is a real bible for anyone interested in chromatography!
