Everything scientific under the sun

Pittcon 2005 takes place at the Orange County Convention Centre in Orlando, Florida, from 27 February to 4 March, 2005. The show will highlight state-of-the-art technology as well as what's on the horizon at the New Product Fora. Education opportunities abound in the short courses, with new courses added to the already extensive lineup.

The technical programme at Pittcon includes lectures on the many aspects of separation sciences, the detection of terrorist weapons; informatics for mass spectroscopy data mining; a molecular portrait of a characterised neuron - direct single cell microanalysis from RNAs to proteins; multifunctional electrode materials for bioelectroanalytical applications; new applications in analytical nuclear magnetic resonance; a paradigm shift in classical chemical analysis: taking the lab to the sample; subcellular proteomics, plus alternative separation and analytical techniques.

There is a symposium on 'Bioterrorism: the federal response, technologies and research'. A series of lectures will concentrate on 'watching chemistry in the central nervous system', which includes methods for identifying dopamine. There will also be lectures about aptamers, which are seen as novel molecular probes for genomics and proteomics, and a series of lectures concerning the FDA's PAT initiative, this time for biopharmaceuticals. Another interesting symposium will be 'Bioanalysis of DNA microarrays', in which the speakers investigate the correlation of surface properties with assay performance.

A full list of speakers at the symposia, which take place from Monday through to Thursday morning, and all other information about Pittcon 2005 can be found on the Pittcon website.