George Guilbault Symposium 2023

8 Nov 2023

The 11th George Guilbault Symposium was hosted in the Aula Maxima in University College Cork on Monday 6th November 2023. This event brought together industry, academia and analytical chemistry postgraduate students.

Part one of the symposium was an online event hosted on Gathertown 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 70 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 41 MSc students presented a poster and a pre-recorded presentation. It also gave the 30 MSc students from the incoming class (2023/24) the opportunity to meet and interact with the class of 2022/23 and to network with industry. At this event the winners from the 2023 George Guilbault Symposium received their awards. 

A special thanks to our sponsors Royal Society of Chemistry, Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly and TEL Labs 

2023 Winners

2021 George Guilbault Award winner (sponsored by Johnson & Johnson)

Student: Siddesh Kelkar
Presentation Title: Electrosynthesis of AuNP-PEDOT Films at a Polarised Liquid|Liquid Interface for Detection of Dopamine

Best Poster Award (sponsored by Eli Lilly)

Student: Mark Healy
Presentation Title: Analysis of Fluorescent Antimicrobials towards their use in Anti-Biofouling Coatings

Special Peer Award (sponsored by TEL Labs)

Student: Grace Clohosey
Presentation Title: The Use of a Handheld FTIR Spectrometer for Remote Cleaning Verification

Runner-up Poster Awards (sponsored by Eli Lilly)

Student: Dorota Stasicka

Presentation Title: Method development for the purification of a monoclonal antibody directly from in-process upstream cell culture material

Student: Gillian Darby

Presentation Title: Evaluation of Serotype Specific Variability in the High-Performance Size Exclusion Chromatography Assay

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George G. Guilbault was the 1st 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.