Eigenvector at Chimiométrie XVII in Namur

Last month I had the pleasure of attending Chimiométrie XVII. This installment ran from January 17-20 in the beautiful city of Namur, BELGIUM. The conference was largely in French but with many talks and posters in English. (My French is just good enough that I can get the gist of most of the French talks if the speakers put enough text on their slides!) There were many good talks and posters demonstrating a lot of chemometric activity in the French speaking world.

I was pleased to see evidence of EVRI software in many presentations and posters. I particularly enjoyed “An NIRS Prediction Engine for Discrimination of Animal Feed Ingredients” by Aitziber Miguel Oyarbide working with the folks at AUNIR. This presentation was done with Prezi which I find quite refreshing. I also enjoyed posters about standardization in milk analysis, determination of post mortem interval, evaluation of pesticide coating on cereal seeds, and sorting of archeological material. All of these researchers used PLS_Toolbox, MIA_Toolbox or Solo to good effect.

EVRI was also proud to sponsor the poster contest which was won by Juan Antonio Fernández Pierna et al. with “Chemometrics and Vibrational Spectroscopy for the Detection of Melamine Levels in Milk.” For his efforts Juan received licenses for PLS_Toolbox and MIA_Toolbox. Congratulations! We wish him continued success in his chemometric endeavors!

Finally I’d like to thank the organizing committee, headed by Pierre Dardenne of Le Centre wallon de Recherches agronomiques. The scientific content was excellent and, oh my, the food was fantastic! I’m already looking forward to the next one!

BMW