Off to Hillerød

I’m leaving in the morning to go to Hillerød, Denmark, where we are holding a Beginning/Intermediate Chemometrics course. I’ll be teaching with Rasmus Bro, which I always enjoy. Rasmus has a very relaxed lecturing style and is very good at explaining chemometric concepts. I always learn something, even when it is about subjects I’m already pretty good at.

The course will be held at FOSS World Headquaters. FOSS is very big in applications of spectroscopy to problems in food and beverages, grain, feed, meat etc. Chemometrics is a critical part of this and FOSS has a substantial chemometrics group. That group is headed up by Lars Nørgaard, the former Head of the Department of Food Science at University of Copenhagen.

I think of Lars more as a chemometrician, however, rather than a manager. PLS_Toolbox owes a number of things to Lars, including Inteval-PLS (iPLS) and ‘color-by.’ iPLS is a method for selecting variables and also elucidating from which part of the spectrum calibration models get their predictive information. The ‘color-by’ feature uses the color of data points in a plot to indicate the value of another variable. It really helps spot trends. I first saw this feature in LatentiX, with which Lars was involved.

We have a nearly full class lined up and with Lars, Rasmus and myself it should make for a lively group. Plus, we’ll be teaching with the just released PLS_Toolbox 6.5. I’ll need to spend some time learning about 6.5’s new features myself. I’m looking forward to it!

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