by David S. Moore
The International Congress on Analytical Sciences 2001 was held
6-10 August at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan. It was an extreme
honor for me to be able to represent the IUPAC at this wonderfully-organized
and executed congress. The congress is organized every ten years
and is a huge undertaking26 symposia, 5 plenary lectures,
281 invited talks, 250 other oral presentations and nearly 450 posters.
It is truly international in scope and attendancewith nearly
a thousand participants from 39 countries. If that isn't enough,
this time the Congress was held jointly with Asianalysis VIthe
Sixth Asian Conference on Analytical Sciencesand a Symposium
on Traditional Chinese Medicine! Clearly the organizers of ICAS
2001chaired by Tsuguo Sawada (Univ. of Tokyo), along with
his Vice-Chairs: N. Nakamura (Sci. Univ. of Tokyo), Y. Umezawa (Univ.
of Tokyomember of the IUPAC Analytical Chemistry Division
Committee), and K. Matsumoto (Waseda Univ.member of the IUPAC
Analytical Chemistry Division Committee) and the other 29 members
of the Organizing Committee and 17 members of the International
Advisory Board (chaired by H. Akaiwa, Gunma, Japan)and the
organizers of Asianalysis VIchaired by T. Hobo (Tokyo Metropolitan
Univ.) and the other 10 members of the Organizing Committee and
17 members of the International Advisory Board (chaired by B. Huang,
Xiamen, China)had to work together efficiently and smoothly.
The excellent conferences they produced provide strong evidence
that they more than succeeded in their task.
The symposia at ICAS 2001 covered all the fields of analytical
chemistry that it seems possible to think of. From analytical atomic
spectrometry and applied laser spectroscopy to nano-technology,
separation science, and sensors of all kinds, the symposia and posters
painted a broad canvas of the present state of the art in analytical
science, and also suggested future directions and dreamed about
future capabilities. What else could one want in such a conference?
The only problem was selecting which of the many relevant and varied
symposia to attend. I found myself wishing cloning was already a
reality, or that I had accomplices with whom to share the task!
The International Advisory Board suggested to the ICAS organizers
that the field of Analytical Science was developing rapidly enough
to warrant thinking about increasing the frequency of this conference
from once per decade to twice. The general consensus was that, while
this increase would mean a doubling of their work load, the payoff
to the international analytical science community would be worth
the price. Regardless of their decision, the international analytical
science community anxiously awaits the next ICAS, and we at IUPAC
hope to be again involved.
The plenary lectures by Drs. A. Manz, S. Terabe, M. Takagi, G.
M. Hieftje, and Y. R. Shen as well as two selected invited talks
by Drs. E. Yeung and T. Sawada are now published in the October
2001 issue of Pure and Applied Chemistry. The Conference editor,
Dr. Yoshio Umezawa insured that the papers were like the lectures,
well balanced in terms of chemical and physical methods of analysis,
and all were seminal.
David
S. Moore is President of the IUPAC Analytical Chemistry Division.
<http://www.iupac.org/publications/pac/2001/7310/index.html>