The 2008 Analytical Chemistry Award for Young Investigators in Separation Science will be presented to Nelson Torto at 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday, March 11 in Room S401A of McCormick Place.
The 2008 Analytical Chemistry Award for Young Investigators in Separation Science will be presented to Nelson Torto at 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday, March 11 in Room S401A of McCormick Place. The award is intended to recognize and encourage outstanding contributions to separation science by a young chemist or chemical engineer. Nomination is open to young chemists or chemical engineers of any nationality from academia, industry, or national laboratories. The nominee must have earned his or her highest degree within 10 years of January 1 of the year of the award. Nominees should have accomplished significant achievements in one or more of the following areas:
• Conceptualization and development of unique instrumentation for separations
• Development of novel and important separation methods or methodologies
• Elucidation of theory or fundamental processes involved in separations
• Other significant contributions to the furtherance of separation science
Nelson Torto currently is the secretary general of the southern and eastern African network of analytical chemists (SEANAC). His major responsibility is ensuring funding for SEANAC activities and analytical chemists. He played a major role in creating the network and in mentoring and strengthening the implementation of analytical chemistry. His research efforts have centered on microdialysis combined with HPLC, electrochemistry, and mass spectrometry. In more recent studies, he used the microdialysis technique to sample metal ions using chelating agents that help the diffusion of analytes across the dialysis membrane. Other areas of interest include supercritical fluid extraction, solid-phase microextraction, and solid-phase extraction for analyzing pesticides in water and sediments in southern Africa.
Torto received a B.Sc. degree from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UK), a masters degree in analytical chemistry from the University of Botswana (Gabarone, Botswana), and a Ph.D. from the University of Lund (Sweden).
Sustainable Green Solvents in Microextraction: A Review of Recent Advancements
March 27th 2024Conventional sample preparation can be time- and resource-consuming, and a green analytical methodology can be a game-changer for scientists, in addition to facilitating selective and sensitive separations.
Transferring Methods to Compact and Portable HPLC
February 14th 2024The current trend in laboratory equipment design is the miniaturization of laboratory instruments. Smaller-scale HPLC instruments offer benefits that cannot be matched by analytical-scale equipment, especially in the areas of portability, reduced fluid volumes, and reduced operating costs. Yet, the miniaturization of laboratory equipment has brought with it a unique set of challenges, including transferring methods to compact LC. Capillary LC expands the use of LC to applications not currently done using conventional LC in a wide array of application areas, including pharmaceutical, food and beverage, petrochemical, environmental, and oil and gas. Greg Ward, Axcend’s CEO wrote, “Customers want an HPLC system with a small footprint, low flow rates and green chemistry.” Join his podcast where he shares method transfer in these application areas.
High-Throughput Analysis of Volatile Compounds in Air, Water, and Soil Using SIFT-MS (Apr 2024)
March 27th 2024This study demonstrates high-throughput analysis of BTEX compounds from several matrices (air, water and soil). Detection limits in the single-digit part-per-billion concentration range (by volume) are readily achievable within seconds using SIFT-MS, because sample analysis is achieved without chromatography, pre-concentration, or drying. We also present a calibration approach that enables speciation of ethylbenzene from the xylenes in real time.