10th Annual George Guilbault Symposium

27 Oct 2022

The 10^th George Guilbault Symposium was hosted in the Aula Maxima in University College Cork on Tuesday 25 October. This event brought together industry, academia and analytical chemistry postgraduate students.

Part one of the symposium was an online event which saw the MSc students present their posters and pre-recorded presentations. Part two of the symposium took place in the Aula Maxima at University College Cork. The top 5 presentations from the online event were shortlisted by the Industry Advisory Board to present and compete for the George Guilbault award. Over 80 attendees were in attendance at the in-person event with a mixture of MSc students, industry and academic representatives.

The online event provided an opportunity for all the taught MSc students to present and showcase their research projects. This year 29 MSc students presented a poster and a pre-recorded presentation. It also gave the incoming class (2022/23) the opportunity to meet and interact with the class of 2021/22 and to network with industry. At this event the winners from the 2021 George Guilbault Symposium received their awards. Due to COVID we were unable to host a live event last year.

A special thanks to our sponsors Royal Society of Chemistry, Janssen, Eli Lilly and TEL Labs and to Tyndall for hosting the event.

2021 Winners

2021 George Guilbault Award winner (sponsored by Janssen)
Student: Katie Conway
Presentation Title: Analytical method validation for a newly approved biopharmaceutical medicinal product

Best Poster Award (sponsored by Eli Lilly)
Student: Julie O’Sullivan
Presentation Title: Development and qualification of a platform SEC-UPLC method for MABS

Special Peer Award (sponsored by TelLabs)
Student: Eve Kearney
Presentation Title: Miniaturised solid-contact ion-selective electrodes for potentiometric determination of nitrate and sodium

Runner-up Poster Awards (sponsored by Eli Lilly)
Student: Maria Maher
Presentation Title: Process science and analytic technologies

Student: Cillian McPhillips
Presentation Title: Comparative study of the aggregation levels in monoclonal antibodies by UV-Vis aggregation index and size exclusion chromatography

2022 Winners

For the 1^st time we have a joint award for the George Guilbault Award!

2022 George Guilbault Award Joint Winners (sponsored by Janssen)
Student: Tara Oonagh Murphy
Presentation Title: Method validation of a pharmaceutical method

Student: Tara Marie Murphy
Presentation Title: Identification of pharmaceutical intermediates using handheld raman spectroscopy instrumentation

Best Poster Award (sponsored by Eli Lilly)
Student: Kelvin Pauly
Presentation Title: Electrochemical micro and nano materials for chemical sensing

Special Peer Award (sponsored by TelLabs)
Student: Devansh Shah
Presentation Title: Development of a Protein-A affinity column using SOLAD non-porous silica for High-Performance Affinity Chromatography of monoclonal antibodies

Runner-up Poster Awards (sponsored by Eli Lilly)
Student: Christopher Riddell
Presentation Title: Aseptic Technique: Container closure integrity testing as part of validation testing for new fill finish line

Student: Jamaal Abubakar
Presentation Title: Comparison study between Agilent infinity I and II systems in Brinny PCV Lab

George G. Guilbault was the 1^st Chair Professor of Analytical Chemistry at University College Cork, Cork, Ireland. He spent 29 years at the University of New Orleans as Research Professor of Analytical Chemistry. He originated the field of biosensors in 1961 when he described the first immobilized enzyme prototype, a system used by NATO as its Nerve Agent Alarm from 1963 until 1985. In 1969 he described the first potentiometric biosensor for urea assay. He has been involved in all types of biosensor research: new immobilization methods for binding antigens, enzymes, antibodies and other biological compounds; electrochemical, piezoelectric and fiber optic transducers for use in biosensor in the gas phase (the first published report of use of an enzyme in 1984 and of an antibody based sensor in 1987).

Professor Guilbault was author of more than 350 research papers, 56 book chapters, 66 review articles, and 11 books, most in the area of biosensors. Since 1987 he was the editor of Analytical Letters (Marcel Dekker, Inc.), an international journal which currently publishes a very large section on biosensors and remained the chief editor until his unexpected death in Dec 2008. He was the co-ordinator of the M.Sc. program in analytical chemistry at University College Cork. He received the B.S. degree (1958) from Loyola University, Chicago, Illinois, and the M.S. (1959) and Ph.D. (1961) degrees from Princeton University, New Jersey. He won the Potts award in Life Science in 1983 by The Franklin Institute for developing improved techniques, less expensive determination of substances of biological instances.