LCGC Blog: Updates from the ACS SCSC for the Separation Science Community

In this month’s LCGC blog, we revisit the mission, vision, and initiatives of the American Chemical Society (ACS) Subdivision on Chromatography and Separations Chemistry (SCSC), a vibrant community within the Analytical Division of the ACS. The SCSC aims to engage the entire separation science community as a focal point of connectivity and communication to advance science and society, enabling all its diverse members to enhance their science and careers.

From gas (GC) and liquid chromatography (LC) to cutting-edge multidimensional techniques and microfluidics, our members represent the full spectrum of analytical innovation across academia, industry, and government laboratories.

As we continue to strengthen connections within the global separations community, this update highlights new initiatives, recent events, and exciting transitions within our executive board. Whether you are a seasoned chromatographer or a newcomer exploring the power of separations, the SCSC remains committed to supporting professional growth, fostering collaboration, and celebrating the achievements that keep our field dynamic and forward-looking.

Our mission remains clear: to foster a dynamic and inclusive network of separation scientists by supporting educational programming, professional development, and collaborative engagement across academia, industry, and government laboratories. Through our events, awards, and online platforms, we aim to highlight the critical role of separation science in solving today’s analytical challenges.

What do we do?

Since its formation in 1985, the SCSC has provided a vital forum for advancing separation science within the ACS community. Over the decades, we have organized symposia at ACS National and Regional Meetings, such as the symposium in Advances in Separations, and other international conferences, showcasing topics that span chromatography, extraction technologies, multidimensional separations, green analytical chemistry, and data-driven approaches to method optimization.

Since 2014, a cornerstone of our activities has been the Young Investigators in Separation Science Award, which recognizes exceptional early-career scientists who are making transformative contributions to the field. In collaboration with Pittcon, we organize the award symposium every year, and we are very excited to celebrate our 2025 awardee, Justin Godinho, at Pittcon 2026 in San Antonio, Texas. Like Godinho, the awardees have exemplified the diversity and innovation that characterize our community, tackling modern challenges in analytical separations.

From 2023–2025, we have continued to expand our virtual and in-person networking opportunities, including a growing presence on LinkedIn, where members can connect, share job postings, and discuss emerging trends. We also remain deeply involved in promoting separation science at Pittcon, where our subdivision has co-organized symposia and networking events focused on topics such as Landing a Career as a Separation Scientist (2023) and Building an Academic Career as a Separation Scientist (2024) (Figure 1).

In addition to professional recognition, the SCSC actively supports public initiatives through our Conference Grant Program, designed to fund separation-science programming at local and regional meetings. This effort helps extend the reach of our field and encourages participation by students and early-career scientists who may not yet have had the opportunity to attend national conferences. In 2023-2025, SCSC has contributed to the programming of about 10 conferences, providing support for various student awards.

In the past two years, one of the major undertakings of the ACS SCSC, has been to preserve the legacy of the ACS Award in Chromatography, one of the most prestigious honors in separation science. When corporate funding for the national award ended, the SCSC worked closely with the Division of Analytical Chemistry to ensure that this recognition would live on. Thanks to the generosity of the co-founders of Advanced Materials Technology, the Joseph J. Kirkland Award in Chromatography was established in 2025 as a divisional-level award. In August 2025, we were thrilled to celebrate the inaugural recipient, Prof. Luis Colón of the University at Buffalo, during the ACS Fall National Meeting in Washington, D.C.

This new award continues to recognize outstanding contributions to separation science while honoring the enduring legacy of excellence established by Kirkland and the original ACS Award in Chromatography. To ensure the award’s continued impact, we invite ongoing support from the broader scientific community.

Who We Are

And now that you know what we do, let me introduce you to our executive team!

I am Emanuela Gionfriddo, I serve as the Chair of ACS SCSC for the biennium 2025-2027. I am an associate professor of Chemistry at the Department of Chemistry of the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. My group develops green sample preparation and separation methods that elucidate the bioaccumulation pathways of contaminants and enable the precise determination of distribution coefficients in complex environmental and biological systems. Our approaches combine advanced microextraction and chromatographic techniques to achieve high sensitivity, selectivity, and sustainability in chemical analysis.

James Grinias serves as the current Past-Chair (2025-2027) and is a professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Rowan University. His research focuses on advancing the fundamentals of liquid chromatography (LC), with particular emphasis on capillary column formats. The Grinias Lab investigates how factors such as column packing, frictional heating, and extra-column effects influence chromatographic performance and applies these insights to analytical challenges in pharmaceutical, environmental, and biomedical applications, and the development of portable LC systems.

Katelynn Perrault Uptmor is ACS SCSC Chair Elect for the next two years and is an assistant professor of Chemistry at the College of William & Mary, where she leads the Nontargeted Separations Laboratory. Her research focuses on advanced multidimensional chromatography, particularly comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography (GC×GC), to characterize complex volatile organic compounds in forensic, biomedical, and environmental contexts. She investigates decomposition odor for forensic search and recovery, develops data processing workflows for multidimensional separations, and integrates her work into undergraduate teaching and research to advance the adoption of these techniques in forensic science.

Caitlin Cain is ACS SCSC secretary and currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Michigan, where her research specializes in the development of chemometric techniques to improve the non-targeted analyses of complex chromatographic data. Previously, she earned her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Washington in 2024 and B.S. degrees in Chemistry and Forensic Science from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2019. Her research efforts have been recognized by numerous fellowships and accolades, including the NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein Postdoctoral Individual National Research Service Award (F32 Fellowship), NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, and the inaugural LCGC Rising Stars of Separation Science Award.

Amber Hupp is ACS SCSC Finance Subcommittee chair and is a professor at the Chemistry Department at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA. Her students and I use gas chromatography along with chemometric methods to analyze biodiesel-diesel blended fuels, and more recently, they have started investigating fragrances. She teaches a variety of courses from general chemistry to instrumental analysis.

Jonathan Edelman is ACS SCSC treasurer and began his career as an analytical chemist in the pharmaceutical industry. Jonathan then moved into a sales and marketing capacity, finding his love of science was easily and effectively combined with strategic business expansion goals. Since then, he has worked in business development in the chromatography field. In 2022, Edelman opened his own business and continues to work and serve the chromatography community.

David Hage serves as an executive board member and is the Hewett University Professor of Chemistry at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His research interests involve the theory, design and use of new affinity-based separations and methods in high-performance liquid chromatography, capillary electrophoresis, and microscale or hybrid systems for the study or analysis of complex samples of biomedical or environmental interest. He is the author of over 360 research publications, reviews, and book chapters, including the Handbook of Affinity Chromatography and the textbook Analytical Chemistry and Quantitative Analysis. He is an AAAS Fellow and the Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Chromatography B.

Hayley Brawley serves as an executive board member and is a space health researcher with a background in analytical chemistry, applied math, and nutritional biochemistry. She earned her PhD in chemistry from Texas A&M University, where she developed chromatographic and mass spectrometry methods to probe metal homeostasis and micronutrient regulation. Dr. Brawley has held research roles at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, where she investigated nutritional biomarkers in flight and analog missions. She currently serves as a senior research scientist with the U.S. Air Force’s Clinical and Operational Space Medicine Consortium (COSMIC). Her translational research portfolio bridges aerospace and defense medicine, with a focus on applying advanced analytical techniques to enable diagnostic innovation from the battlefield to space.

Walter Brent Wilson serves as an executive board member and a Research Scientist at NIST where he coordinates the CSD Cannabis research program with a focus on developing Cannabis reference materials and a Quality Assurance Program (CannaQAP). As part of his work, he develops methods based on GC and reversed-phase liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry or tandem mass spectrometry methods to separate many natural and synthetic cannabinoids in complex Cannabis matrices: dried plant, extracts, concentrates, edibles.

Jonathan Shackman, an executive board member, is currently a principal scientist in the Chemical & Synthetic Development department at Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS), supporting drug development for both small molecule and biologics from pre-clinical through marketed products. He held a National Research Council position at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) developing new electrophoretic separation techniques with a range of applications from forensics to astrobiology. After NIST, Shackman served as an assistant professor in Analytical Chemistry at Temple University, teaching and supervising a graduate research group studying novel separations, microfluidics, and applications to biological systems. In 2010 he joined BMS, where he has received 9 awards, including the 2017 BMS Chemistry Leadership Award.