Photos of the SCS Fall Meeting Aperitif on Sep 6, 2018

On the eve of the SCS Fall Meeting on September 6, 2018, about 60 guests of the SCS joined the aperitif and the conference dinner. SCS prize winners, sponsoring partners, delegates from partner societies, FM session chairs and SCS board memberers participated and enjoyed the evening that was perfectly organized by Prof. Sandrine Gerber, EPFL, and her team. 

Enjoy browsing throuth the impressions of the aperitif and the prize ceremonies:

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Photos: Alain Herzog, EPFL Lausanne, and team

SCS Prize Ceremonies on the Occasion of the SCS Fall Meeting 2018

On the eve of the SCS Fall Meeting 2018 in Lausanne, the Swiss Chemical Society celebrated the prize winners 2018 and honored three individuals and one team for their outstanding, scientific contributions.
All winners contributed an invited lecture to one of the plenary sessions of the SCS Fall Meeting and gave an isight into their research activities of the past years.

We like to take to opportunity to congratulates all winnders again for their exiting achievments and we are looking forward to their CHIMIA articels next year that will be published in issue 7-8/2019.
 

The Swiss Chemical Society awarded

Prof. Ruedi Aebersold, ETH Zurich,
the Paracelsus Award 2018
for his exceptional and visionary contributions to the field of proteomics in general and to the fields of analytical chemistry, protein chemistry, and mass spectrometry specifically.

Dr. Paul W. Manley, Novartis Pharmaceuticals AG, Basel,
the SISF-SCS Distinguished Investigator Award 2018 
for his impressive track record of success as a medicinal chemist, including 31 years in Basel at Sandoz/Novartis, working in several disease areas and on multiple classes of drug targets, including the invention of the commercial antileukemia drug Nilotinib.

Dr. Clemens Lamberth, Syngenta Crop Protection AG, Stein,
the SISF-SCS Senior Investigator Award 2018
for his impressive track record of success in the field of fungicide research within Crop Protection, including the invention of the fungicide Mandipropamid (Revus®, Pergado®).

to the team from Syngenta Crop Protection AG, Stein (AG), namely
Dr. Raymonde Fonné-Pfister,
Dr. Claudio Screpanti,
Dr. Alain De Mesmaeker and
Dr. Harro Bouwmeester, University of Amsterdam,
the Sandmeyer Award 2018
for their pioneering work on Strigolactones that can be considered a collaboration masterpiece between Industry and Academia to explore novel area of this phytohormonal family. 

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Photos: Alain Herzog, EPFL Lausanne, and team

Element Scarcity – EuChemS Periodic Table

The smartphone you may be using right now to look at this unique Periodic Table is made up of some 30 elements – over half of which may give cause for concern in the years to come because of increasing scarcity. The issue of element scarcity cannot be stressed enough. With some 10 million smartphones being discarded or replaced every month in the European Union alone, we need to carefully look at our tendencies to waste and improperly recycle such items. Unless solutions are provided, we risk seeing many of the natural elements that make up the world around us run out – whether because of limited supplies, their location in conflict areas, or our incapacity to fully recycle them. 

Protecting endangered elements needs to be achieved on a number of levels. As individuals, we need to question whether upgrades to our phones and other electronic devices are truly necessary, and we need to make sure that we recycle correctly to avoid old electronics don’t end up in landfill sites or polluting the environment. On a political level, we need to see a greater recognition of the risk element scarcity poses, and moves need to be made to support better recycling practices and an efficient circular economy. Moreover, transparency and ethical issues need to be considered to avoid the abuse of human rights, as well as to allow citizens to make informed choices when purchasing smartphones or other electronics – as many of the elements we require in our electronics are imported from conflict zones.

2019 has been pronounced the International Year of the Periodic Table (IYPT2019), and EuChemS, the European Chemical Society, hopes that this unique and thought-provoking Periodic Table will lead to reflection and ultimately, action. Over the next year, they will provide featured articles on specific elements, their endangered status, and the consequences this will have on the world around us.

The Periodic Table is available for free download. Please note that the work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution NoDerivs CC BY-ND.

Support notes, which explain in more detail how the Periodic Table has been designed, and which also include some questions for students, will soon be available for download on the EuChemS website.

Spread the word and help protect endangered elements! Share on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and follow the conversation through #elementscarcity & #IYPT2019. 

https://www.euchems.eu/iypt2019/

Interview with Prof. Joseph Wang, University of California San Diego (USA)

Continuous monitoring of vital parameters from a person’s body has the potential to provide crucial health information to them or their healthcare provider in a timely fashion. Wearable, flexible electrochemical sensors, for instance integrated on the epidermis, can be used to measure non-invasively metabolites and electrolytes for various biomedical applications. Dr. Joseph Wang, Distinguished Professor and Director of the UCSD Center of Wearable Sensors has been invited to give a plenary lecture at the 2^ndSwiss Symposium in Point-of-Care Diagnostic in Chur on 18^thof October 2018. On the eve of this Symposium Prof. Wang has been interviewed by the conference chairs, Dr. Dieter Ulrich (CSEM Landquart) and Prof. Marc E. Pfeifer (HES-SO Valais, School of Engineering).

Symposium website: www.pocdx.ch

Dear Professor Wang, in the future are we all going to wear clothes with sensors to monitor vital signs and have bracelets or sensing tattoos to measure the concentration of biomarkers? 

While this is also my vision, these innovative devices must provide clinically relevant information. Hence, initially, I expect fitness applications of these gadgets, although there are tremendous efforts toward integrating similar glucose monitors.

Your plenary lecture at the 2^ndSwiss Symposium in Point-of-Care Diagnostics in Chur is entitled “Wearable Electrochemical Sensors: Toward Labs on the Skin”. Can you please give us already an outlook of what the symposium participants will be hearing from you? 

Yes, I will describe a variety of wearable non-invasive (or minimally-invasive) platforms for electrochemical monitoring of biomarkers in sweat, ISF, saliva and more. Our goal is to go beyond monitoring mobility or vital signs by providing real-time biochemical information.

Glucose sensing for diabetes management – a huge market - is largely based on electrochemical methods. What are the advantages and challenges associated with electrochemical sensors when it comes to detecting and quantifying molecules on or through the skin?

Indeed, electrochemical systems continue to play a leading role in the monitoring of glucose, e.g. the continuous glucose monitor of our San Diego partner Dexcom Inc. Considering this huge market, I will discuss recent effort toward skin-worn sweat or ISF based glucose sensing platforms.  

You are an advisor for several San Diego-based companies that are developing a mobile technology connected diagnostic platform for use at home. Is increasing access to meaningful data going to improve health and well-being of people? 

Mobile-health systems used at home are expected to improve our quality of life, beyond the management of diabetes. Remote home-based elderly care is one such direction being widely explored by various companies.

There are sometimes concerns expressed regarding quality and analytical performance issues of point-of-care diagnostic devices, especially when compared with clinical analyzers in a central laboratory. Are future sensors and wearable devices going to perform equally well? Where is a need for further improvements on a technological level?

Indeed, it is hard to shrink sophisticated clinical analyzers onto the skin or the oral cavity. Nevertheless, significant progress is being made toward the creation of soft epidermal microfluidic platforms for performing the necessary sample manipulations on the skin.

Are nano-robots / -machines one day going to replace in vitro diagnostics (IVD) or even surgery?

Yes, functionalizing nanorobots with proper receptor can lead to new diagnostic tools, and new capsules explore these capabilities.  Eventually, in-vivo microrobots will assist surgical procedures, and nano-grippers are already being developed for tasks such as biopsy.

CSEM SA
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www.csem.ch