LIBS 2010 a huge success

Just back from the LIBS 2010 conference last week in Memphis – a great meeting hosted by Jagdish Singh from Mississppi State University.  With over 200 attendees, several short courses (including one by yours truly), 48 podium presentations, and about 100 poster presentations, there was more than enough to see, and there were lots of exciting things to talk about.

One of the clear themes to many of the talks was the increasing importance of chemometrics in most LIBS applications.  At the last International LIBS conference in Berlin, 2008, there were only a few talks that included a substantial portion of chemometrics in the analysis.  Two years later, most papers included some sort of multivariate analysis in their arsenal.  (Here at Photon, we use chemometrics on a daily basis).  This was a good thing to see.  In my short course I discussed both the use and misuse of chemometrics for LIBS.

Another piece of interest to me was the emergence of more applications in industry playing central roles in process control and for key analyses.  As LIBS gains acceptance, we will certainly see more mission critical applications. 

Overall, it was an exciting time for LIBS!  The next US-based meeting will be NASLIBS 2011 in Clearwater, FL, July 18-20, 2011 at the Sheraton Sand Key Resort, co-chaired by yours truly.  The European / Mediterranean Symposium on LIBS (EMSLIBS 2011) will be held in Çe?me-Izmir,  Turkey, hosted by the Izmir Institute of Technology, from September 11-15, 2011.

Check out the program here: http://www.icet.msstate.edu/LIBS2010/LIBS2010_Technical_Program_16July.pdf

Yours in LIBS, Steve