EigenU Poster Winners

Hello EigenFriends and EigenFans,

Two months ago we hosted the 12th Annual EigenU at the Washington Athletic Club in Seattle, WA. We had over 50 people join us through six days of hands-on chemometric courses, and once again had an awesome poster session where users got to display their use of PLS_Toolbox and EVRI methods in their recent research. We named two winners to take home the poster prizes from the session: Dr. Gordon G. Allison of Aberystwyth University, and Dr. Amanda Lines of PNNL. Information about their posters are attached below; congrats to you both!

21866_IBERS Seattle Conference Poster_FINAL1

Says Allison, “The Eigenvector PLS toolbox, and later the MIA toolbox, has been a staple of my data analysis platform for over 10 years. If it wasn’t the best I would have moved on. The software integrates seamlessly into Matlab and I move between command line and gui at will. The flexibility and variety of algorithms in the PLS toolbox never ceases to impress me, and Eigenvector seem to never run out of ideas of how the toolbox can be refined and expanded… I heartedly recommend that PLS toolbox users come along to the annual Eigen University in Seattle, to hone their skills in basic to advanced chemomentrics. I’ve been to 3 and always learn something new and valuable. The atmosphere is vibrant, fun, friendly and informal, the quality of instruction excellent, and the location couldn’t be better.”

Dr. Amanda Lines of PNNL also took home a poster prize regarding her work on “Using multivariate analysis to quantify and identify speciation of plutonium”. The abstract is below:

Amanda M. Lines1, Susan R. Adami1, Sergey I. Sinkov1, Amanda J. Casella1; Gregg J. Lumetta1, and Samuel A, Bryan1

1- Energy and Environment Directorate, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA 99352

Development of more effective, reliable, and fast methods for monitoring process streams is a growing opportunity for analytical applications. Many fields can benefit from on-line monitoring, including the nuclear fuel cycle where improved methods for monitoring radioactive materials will facilitate maintenance of proper safeguards and ensure safe and efficient processing of materials. On-line process monitoring with a focus on optical spectroscopy can provide a fast, non-destructive method for monitoring chemical species. However, identification and quantification of species can be hindered by the complexity of the solutions if bands overlap or show condition-dependent spectral features. Plutonium (IV) is one example of a species which displays significant spectral variation with changing nitric acid concentration. Single variate analysis (i.e. Beer’s Law) is difficult to apply to the quantification of Pu(IV) unless the nitric acid concentration is known and separate calibration curves have been made for all possible acid strengths. Multivariate, or chemometric, analysis is an approach that allows for the accurate quantification of Pu(IV) without a priori knowledge of nitric acid concentration. Chemometric analysis is also an effective avenue for quantifying multiple species in solution that exhibit overlapping bands. This is demonstrated by the accurate measurement of multiple actinides (Pu(IV), Pu(III), U(IV), U(VI)) in multicomponent streams under dynamic conditions.

Thanks to everyone who participated in the poster session this year; all the posters were fantastic and it was dubbed the best EigenU poster session yet!