Mary Ellen McNally Wins 2021 EAS Award for Outstanding Achievements in Separation Science

Mary Ellen McNally

The 2021 Eastern Analytical Symposium (EAS) Award for Outstanding Achievements in Separation Science will be presented to Mary Ellen McNally at the EAS Symposium taking place November 15–17, 2021, in Plainsboro, New Jersey. The annual EAS awards honor analytical chemists who have distinguished career achievements and who have advanced their fields by superior work in developing theory, techniques, or instrumentation.

McNally is a Technical Fellow at the Stine Research Center for FMC Corporation. Her specialties include separations, sample preparation, and sensors focused on the environmental fate of agricultural products, ultratrace level analysis, and detection. Currently, her focus is on the analysis associated with manufacturing and process development of new agricultural products and their worldwide registration.

Before joining FMC, McNally worked for DuPont for 33 years. She has led teams on new emerging technologies and has led an interdisciplinary team of scientists from three universities and DuPont on a National Science Foundation (NSF) Grant Opportunities for Academic Liaison with Industry (GOALI) project. She has been recognized for her contributions to the field of supercritical fluids by the Midwest Supercritical Fluid Chromatography and the Tri-State Analytical Supercritical Fluid discussion groups.

A current member the editorial advisory board for LCGC magazine, McNally is a former member of the Instrumentation Panel and the Advisory Board for the journal Analytical Chemistry, and the editorial board of Talanta. She has been a long-standing board member of the Chromatography Forum of Delaware Valley, serving as the President and Program Chair twice, and is currently the chair of the Audit, Nominating, and Dal Nogare award committees. She is also a member of the Executive Committee of EAS and was the president in 2018.

While at DuPont, McNally received DuPont Crop Protection’s Scientific Leadership Award, a peer-nominated and -selected award. This award afforded her the opportunity to work at the Imperial College in London in capillary electrochromatography (CE) as well as liquid chromatography and CE on a microchip. She was also a visiting scientist at the Molecular Engineering Cooperative Research Center of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), an Australian Government agency responsible for scientific research, working in the area of biosensors. She has also been the recipient of DuPont’s highest awards for Engineering Excellence, Marketing Excellence, and Environmental Stewardship for her contributions to the development and detection of crop protection products. McNally is ALSO a representative to the English-Speaking Pesticide Analytical Council (ESPAC), a division of CIPAC and the World Health Organization (WHO).