Subdivision meets at PittCon
The Subdivision on Chromatography and Separations Chemistry (SCSC) of the American Chemical Society (ACS) will hold its annual business meeting in room 221E of the West Hall of the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida, from noon to 2:00 pm on Monday March 12, 2012. Ideas and subjects for the agenda can be made by contacting , the Subdivision's Secretary or any of the officers. An agenda will be sent in a follow up message. Please come with ideas of what the SCSC can do to become a more active subdivision. Anyone with an interest in chemical separations is welcome to attend, a light lunch will be provided for the first 25 attendees, courtesy of Thermofisher/Dionex. We look forward to seeing you in Orlando.

Division Newsletter just published The December 2011 issue of the Division's Newsletter is now available. Editor Xudong Yao has included a large variety of reports from the Officers, articles and many photos from Division activities. There is a page of information on each of the Division's award recipients, as well as news and photos about the recent ACS Meeting in Denver and the large number of Division members who are new ACS Fellows.

Division Programming at PittCon 2012 The sessions for the Division's PittCon 2012 programming in Orlando, Florida are now set. The PittCon website will give information on the speakers and topics for each of the sessions.

Plans for the San Diego ACS National Meeting are now set The complete program for the Spring ACS National Meeting in San Diego, March 25-29, 2012 is available here. The programming theme for the meeting is The Chemistry of Life.

Welcome!

I am honored to be taking over as new Chair of the Analytical Division of the ACS, effective October 1, 2011. As my first duty, I want to express my thanks to Sue Lunte, past Chair, for all her hard work and dedication to this post last year.

As I take over the Chair duties, I look back at my year as program chair with both pride and relief! It was a very busy time. The Division had strong analytical programs this year at both the Spring and Fall ACS meetings (where we completely filled dual-track sessions Sunday through Thursday), in addition to our continued co-programming at the PittCon and FACSS meetings. Cindy Larive is the program chair for 2012 and I encourage you to contact her with ideas for sessions for either this year or into the future. We are always interested in new session suggestions, and we want to again have strong program content for 2012 and beyond.

I also want to congratulate all of the Society's and Division's analytical award winners, as listed elsewhere on this site. With the completion of the Fall ACS meeting and the FACSS meeting, we have conducted a number of award sessions honoring our esteemed colleagues. I also encourage you to be thinking about nominations for both national and divisional analytical chemistry awards for next year most of these nominations are due in November (see this site and the ACS Awards site for further information and details).

One activity I am keen on as Chair is to increase our collective presence at the national meetings. I have really been impressed by the breadth and depth of the scientific sessions there and think the analytical community is missing out by not being there in force. I am thinking of instituting a new analytical symposium series there to help attract analytical chemists to the meetings. More on this later, please stay tuned.

Finally, I want to welcome you to this web site, which we are striving to make a central resource and depository of analytical chemistry information and happenings. Please take some time to look over the site and feel free to make recommendations on content you would like to see added or changed. You can direct your comments to any member of the Division Executive Committee or to the Webmaster.

Thanks, and on to the 2012 year!

Dr. David Koppenaal Chair, Division of Analytical Chemistry