LCGC Announces the 2027 Winners of the Lifetime Achievement and Emerging Leader in Chromatography Awards

LCGC International, the leading multimedia platform connecting the separation science community with the research, people, applications, and techniques shaping the field, is proud to announce that Robert T. Kennedy and María José Trujillo-Rodríguez are the winners of the 20th annual LCGC Lifetime Achievement and Emerging Leader in Chromatography Awards, respectively. Kennedy and Trujillo-Rodríguez will be honored in a symposium as part of the technical program at Pittcon 2027 in April 2027.

The Lifetime Achievement Award

The Lifetime Achievement in Chromatography Award honors an outstanding professional for a lifetime of contributions to the advancement of chromatographic techniques and applications.

Kennedy, the 2027 winner, is the Hobart H. Willard Distinguished University Professor of Chemistry at the University of Michigan. He received his BS in chemistry from the University of Florida and his PhD in chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is best known for combining separation science with biology, developing new analytical tools for small samples and high-throughput analysis, from single cells to the brains of living subjects.

Kennedy co-developed packed capillary liquid chromatography (LC) columns, now often called nanoLC, in which 1–5 µm particles are packed into capillaries less than 75 µm in inner diameter. His 1989 Analytical Chemistry paper showed that these columns could reach reduced plate heights as low as about 1. Packed capillaries are now the standard for proteomics, and Kennedy has been instrumental in bringing them to metabolomics and lipidomics. He has since pushed column performance further by packing long columns with 1–2 µm particles at pressures up to 35,000 psi, and he reported the first ultrahigh-pressure hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography (HILIC) columns.

He has also made separations faster. In chip-based capillary electrophoresis (CE), he developed sample introduction methods, including the use of droplets, that enabled sustained, high-speed analysis for in vivo monitoring and high-throughput screening. In LC, he and James Grinias invented a rapid injection method that enables separation rates of up to one sample per second, which has already been applied to reaction screening and high-throughput peptide mapping of antibodies.

Kennedy’s work on affinity electrophoresis includes the first CE-based immunoassay (1993), followed by aptamer and protein–protein interaction assays based on separations of noncovalent complexes in under 10 s. These assays have been used to monitor insulin secretion from single islets of Langerhans and to screen for inhibitors. He also developed and patented a capillary and chip electrophoresis–based western blotting method that is now under commercial development.

His methods for monitoring brain chemistry, including coupling in vivo sampling to CE and to capillary LC–mass spectrometry (MS), have improved the spatial and temporal resolution, selectivity, and multiplexing of neurochemical measurements. Working with neuroscientists, he has applied them to questions such as the role of dopamine in behavior. His early work on single-cell analysis using miniaturized LC and CE (Science, 1989) helped lay the groundwork for routine single-cell proteomics today. More recently, with Kristin Koutmou, he has developed HILIC–MS methods for measuring and sequencing RNA modifications.

Kennedy is the author of 324 publications and has given more than 300 presentations at scientific conferences. He has served as an associate editor of Analytical Chemistry since 2010 and of ACS Measurement Science Au since 2021. He was president of HPLC, Inc., the nonprofit that organizes the HPLC meetings in the United States, from 2018 to 2022, and he chaired the HPLC 2016 conference, which drew 1100 participants.

Over his career, Kennedy has received numerous awards. Highlights include a Beckman Young Investigator Award (1994); an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (1995); an NSF Presidential Faculty Fellowship (1996); the ACS Findeis Award in Analytical Chemistry (1998); the American Microchemical Society’s Benedetti-Pichler Memorial Award (2001); the McKnight Award for Technical Innovations in Neuroscience (2010); the Marcel Golay Award for Lifetime Achievement in Capillary Chromatography (2012); the Eastern Analytical Symposium (EAS) Award for Separation Science (2012); the ACS Award in Chromatography (2017); the Ralph Adams Award for Bioanalytical Chemistry (2017); the Stephen Dal Nogare Award (2018); the A.J.P. Martin Award of the Chromatographic Society (2019); the Anachem Award (2019); the EAS Award for Outstanding Achievements in the Fields of Analytical Chemistry (2023); the CE Pharm Award (2024); the Sciex Innovation Award (2025); and the Philip J. Wyatt Award in Analytical Chemistry (2027).

The Emerging Leader Award

The Emerging Leader in Chromatography Award recognizes the achievements and aspirations of a talented young separation scientist who has made strides early in his or her career toward the advancement of chromatographic techniques and applications.

Trujillo-Rodríguez, the 2027 winner, received her PhD in chemistry in 2017 at the University of La Laguna, in Tenerife, Spain, with an international mention and the university’s Extraordinary Doctorate Award. She then worked as a postdoctoral research associate with Jared L. Anderson at Iowa State University, in the United States, and went on to postdoctoral positions at the University of the Balearic Islands and, as a Juan de la Cierva fellow, at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) in Zaragoza, Spain. After returning to La Laguna with a La Caixa–CajaCanarias Excellence research contract, in 2023 she became a Ramón y Cajal research scientist at the University of La Laguna, where she is a member of the Materials for Chemical Analysis (MAT4LL) group.

Trujillo-Rodríguez’s contributions to separation science center on the design of functional materials, including ionic liquids, magnetic ionic liquids, polymeric ionic liquids, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), and magnetic deep eutectic solvents, for miniaturized sample preparation that is coherently coupled with gas chromatography (GC), high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), and MS. Her research treats sample preparation as an integral part of the chromatographic measurement, with applications in environmental monitoring, food analysis, and bioanalysis.

During her time in Anderson’s group, she reported the first in situ formation of a hydrophobic magnetic ionic liquid for dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction, which simplified phase separation and the overall workflow. She also developed silver-based polymeric ionic liquid sorbent coatings for solid-phase microextraction (SPME) that selectively extract unsaturated compounds. Earlier, she pioneered the use of magnetic ionic liquids as extraction solvents in vacuum headspace single-drop microextraction, coupled with GC–MS to determine short-chain free fatty acids in milk.

In her independent research, Trujillo-Rodríguez has developed analytical methods that facilitate the direct injection of new generations of bimetallic magnetic ionic liquids with ultra-low viscosity into reversed-phase HPLC, removing the back-extraction and solvent-exchange steps such extractions usually require. She has also integrated magnetic ionic liquids into effervescence tablets as simple microdevices for extracting urinary biomarkers, and she has contributed to MOF-coated glass vials that serve as both sample container and extraction device. Several of these studies were selected as journal front covers. She is currently principal investigator of one competitive research project on monitoring contaminants of emerging concern in the aquifers of the Canary Islands.

To date, Trujillo-Rodríguez has published 46 peer-reviewed articles, 15 book chapters, and one co-edited book, Metal-Organic Frameworks in Analytical Sample Preparation and Sensing (Elsevier). Her work has been cited more than 2200 times. She has given 74 presentations at international conferences and currently supervises five PhD students.

She is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Analytical Methods in Chemistry (Wiley), a member of the editorial board of Analytica Chimica Acta, and a member of the Early Career Editorial Advisory Board of Advances in Sample Preparation. Her other honors include Ramón y Cajal (2021 call), Juan de la Cierva, and La Caixa–CajaCanarias Excellence research contracts and the Best PhD Award in the Chemistry Section of the University of La Laguna (2019).

Visit the LCGC website for information about past LCGC award winners or for information on how to nominate a candidate for the 2028 Lifetime Achievement and Emerging Leader in Chromatography Awards.