MACC 2022

On August 29-30, 2022, the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry and the Milwaukee Institute for Drug Discovery (MIDD) held the second Milwaukee Analytical Chemistry Conference (MACC) titled, “Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance”. After a two-year hiatus owing to COVID restrictions, we were delighted to host the conference again, this time as a dual-mode (in-person and virtual), two-day event. More than 100 people from local educational institutions, organizations, and companies attended.

After registration and breakfast, sponsored by A.O. Smith, the conference was inaugurated by Doug Williamson, Principal Scientist from Millipore Sigma. A job fair was held during lunch, sponsored by Sterling. The presenters from Actalent, A.O.Smith, Biotage, Eurofins, Millipore-Sigma, Shimadzu, and Sterling offered company overviews, job searching tips, resume reviews, and on-site interviews.

Following lunch and the career fair, David Riggs, Business Cluster President of Eurofins SF, kicked off the second part of the day with a talk titled, “Analytical Chemistry Applications for Ingredients, Food, Beverages, Pet Food, Dietary Supplements”.

Short research talks by Profs. Alexander Arnold and Shama Mirza were followed by a plenary talk by Dr. Chris LeClair, Team Lead, Analytical Chemistry at the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), titled, “Development and Implementation of High-Throughput Technologies and Automated Platforms to Improve Analytical Analysis Workflows”.

The first day of the conference ended with a dinner sponsored by Millipore-Sigma that was accompanied by a mixer and undergraduate and graduate student poster sessions. Brenden Chasteen was awarded first place for the best undergraduate student poster.  Kayode Medubi was awarded first place for the best graduate student poster titled “Optimization of a LCMS-MS method to quantify DAW-III-30 and determination of its metabolic stability”. Both poster awards were sponsored by Actalent.

The second day included analytical workshops. Biotage presented about their new product line for HPLC sample preparation. Shimadzu focused their workshop on GC sampling and PFAS analysis. The feature talk of the second day was presented by Akhilesh Pandey, Professor of Medicine and Pathology at the Mayo Clinic, titled, “Proteomics and Glycoprotoemics for Translational Research”. His talk was followed by a Eurofins-sponsored luncheon.

If you attended this year’s Milwaukee Analytical Chemistry Conference and would like to provide feedback, please do so here: https://uwm.edu/chemistry/post-macc-survey-2022/

We would like to thank all of our sponsors – Actalent, A.O.Smith, Biotage, Ereztech, Eurofins, MilliporeSigma, Shimadzu and Sterling – for their generous support, which enabled us to offer you the MACC on the UWM campus free of charge.