André de Kok Wins Excellence Award at NACRW Conference

André de Kok, a senior analytical chemist at the at the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA), was presented with the Excellence Award at the annual North American Chemical Residue Workshop (NACRW) Conference on July 18, 2016. During the award ceremony, de Kok gave a talk called “The Evolution and Importance of Detection Methods in Pesticide Residue Analysis Through the Years.”

De Kok is the scientific coordinator of the National Reference Laboratory (NRL) for Pesticide Residues in Food and Feed, participates in the EURL-NRL network, and is responsible for method development, validation, and implementation in routine analysis.

He received his master’s degree in analytical chemistry from the Free University Amsterdam in 1979, and his PhD in 1983 from the same university. He has been working with the Food Inspection Service in Alkmaar, the Netherlands since 1983, and as the head of the Pesticide Analysis Department since 1985, where he has been specializing in the development, validation, and implementation of analytical methods for pesticide residues in fruits and vegetables, focusing on multiresidue methods using advanced sample preparation, gas chromatography (GC), and liquid chromatography (LC) separation methods with specific detection techniques. Additionally, he is a senior analytical chemist in the Research and Development Group of the Chemistry Laboratory of the VWA-Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority, in Amsterdam, and a member of the advisory group for the EU Reference Laboratories for Pesticide Residues.

De Kok’s research interests include QA/QC procedures, extraction methods, sample preparation, pre- and post-column derivatization, chromatographic separation methods, and detection techniques, mainly based on low- and high-resolution mass spectrometry. In addition to the more than 30 papers de Kok has authored or coauthored in scientific journals, he also is a coauthor of the well-known Dutch manual Analytical Methods for Pesticide Residues in Foodstuffs.

An interview with de Kok is available in a new LCGC e-book on the analysis of pesticides and other residues, developed with support from the NACRW. Click this link to read the interview: http://bit.ly/2ancRXS