Pittcon Editors’ Awards have honoured the best new products on show at The Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy, or Pittcon, since being established in 1996 by Dr Gordon Wilkinson, managing editor of Analytical Instrument Industry Report (later Instrumenta). The event attracted 16,876 attendees in 2010.

The independent awards, which represent the results of an informal poll of leading editors, have become an important feature of the world’s largest trade show for the laboratory equipment industry. Pittcon organisers and media center support the scheme, but prefer to refer to them as the event’s Editors' Choice Awards.

History and organisation

The awards were started because of the challenge that editors faced of effectively covering the trade show, which in 2011 hosted 978 exhibitor companies in 2,061 booths. One fifth of the exhibitors were from 29 countries outside the USA; 108 companies were exhibiting for the first time. Walking past every booth at the 570,061 square feet (53,000 square metres) exposition floor at Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, Georgia represented a trek of over 10 kilometres (6.2 mi).

Accredited media representatives, of whom there are more than 150 per year, are invited to list up to three new products on a nomination form provided on registration at the Media Center. Editors are invited to attend a judging session towards the end of the trade show. They review entries and vote on the nominated products. The only criterion is that products must appear at the exhibition for the first time, but winning products usually feature innovations in technology or industrial design, or may enable new analytical applications.

Gold, Silver and Bronze winners are determined and plaques are awarded to the booth personnel of the winning companies on the final morning of the four-day exposition. Other nominated products receive an Honorable Mention, such as Starlims

Starlims

STARLIMS, an Abbott Company, develops and sells web-based commercial off-the-shelf Laboratory Information Management Systems ; Software solutions which manage the collection, processing, storage, retrieval and analysis of information generated in laboratories.- Corporate history :STARLIMS's initial...

 laboratory information management system in 2006.

Contacts for the awards scheme at Pittcon 2012, which takes place from March 11 to 16 in Orlando, Florida include Dr Eileen M Skelly Frame, Stefan Fritsch, Dr Brian Howard, Dr David Sparkman and Dr Bob Stevenson.

Award winners

Winners for the period 1996 to 2011, together with the names of their products, are listed below. Company names are listed in the format used at the date of the award, although may have now changed as a result of change of ownership. Trademarks are acknowledged, but not indicated; readers should check corporate literature or websites for current intellectual property rights. Web links are only provided for award-winning products up to five years old. Products introduced earlier have usually been updated with more recent models.

2011:

• Gold - LECO - Citius LC-MS; and WITec - True Surface Microscopy Raman spectrometer
• Silver - EMD Millipore - Samplicity filtration system;
• Bronze – AstraNet - AstraGene Life Sciences spectrophotometer

2010:

• Gold - Affinity Biosensors - Archimedes particle sizing instrument;
• Silver - Ametek - Spectro MS simultaneous inductively-coupled plasma mass spectrometer;
• Bronze – MSI Tokyo - InfiTOF compact time-of-flight mass spectrometer

2009:

• Gold - InXitu - Terra portable XRF/XRD system;
• Silver - Picarro Inc/OI Analytical - iTOC-CRDS Isotopic Carbon Analyzer;
• Bronze – Shimadzu Corp - IG-1000 Single Nano Particle Size Analyzer

2008:

• Gold – Bruker Corp - SMART X2S automated X-ray diffractometer;
• Silver - Nlisis BV - Meltfit One capillary column connector;
• Bronze - Bruker Corp - Portable S2 PICOFOX total reflection X-ray fluorescence spectrometer.

2007:

• Gold - Waters Corp - Synapt high definition mass spectrometer;
• Silver - Paraytec Ltd - ActiPix D100 and Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc - Electron-Transfer Dissociation module for mass spectrometry;
• Bronze - Bruker Optics - Alpha FT-IR spectrometer and Horiba Jobin Yvon - ACTIVA-M ICP-AES.

2006:

• Gold - Thermo Electron Corp - Finnigan LTQ Orbitrap hybrid mass spectrometer
• Silver - Chata Biosystems Inc - Chem+Mix
• Bronze – Cerno Bioscience – MassWorks.

2005:

• Gold – JEOL Ltd - DART (direct analysis real-time) ionisation technology for mass spectrometry;
• Silver - ESA Biosciences Inc – Corona CAD charged aerosol detector, Dionex Corp - ICS-3000 Reagent-free research-grade ion chromatography system and Shimadzu Corp - LC/MS-IT-TOF;
• Bronze - Agilent Technologies Inc - HPLC-Chip ESI/MS.

2004:

• Gold - Waters Corp - ACQUITY UPLC and Bruker Optics Inc / Teraview Ltd- TPI Spectra 1000;
• Silver - Wyatt Technology Corp - Optilab rEX;
• Bronze - Axsun Technologies Inc - Miniature NIR-APS analyzers.

2003:

• Gold - Dionex Corp - ICS 2000 Reagent-Free ion chromatography system;
• Silver - Thermo Electron Corp - Finnigan LTQ hybrid ion-trap FTMS;
• Bronze - LECO Corp - ChromaTOF software and Ionalytics - Selectra dynamic ion filter.

2002:

• Gold – Horiba Jobin-Yvon Inc - LabRam IR and Thermo Labsystems - eRecordManager software;
• Silver - Ultrasonic Scientific - HR-US 101;
• Bronze – JEOL Ltd - AccuTOF mass spectrometer.

2001:

• Gold – Merck KGaA - Chromolith monolithic HPLC columns
  Monolithic HPLC columns
  A monolithic HPLC column is a special type of column used in HPLC with porous channels rather than beads.High performance liquid chromatography is the third most widely used laboratory instrument, surpassed only by analytical balances and pH meters. Advances in HPLC are evolutionary, not...
  
  ;
• Silver – Siemens AG - Advance Quantra FTICR mass spectrometer
• Bronze - CEM Corp - SMART Trac and Syagen Technology - Radiance Pro quadrupole ion trap TOF MS.

2000:

• Gold – Agilent Technologies Inc - 2100 Bioanalyzer;
• Silver – Beckman Corp / ThermoQuest - P/ACE MDQ capillary electrophoresis-mass spectrometer;
• Bronze – Textron Inc - NIR Grain analyzer.

1999:

• Gold - PerkinElmer SCIEX - ELAN 6100 DRC ICP-MS;
• Silver - Bear Instruments Inc - Kodiak 1200 benchtop MS-MS;
• Bronze – ThermoQuest Corp - Finnigan LCQ Deca ion trap MS.

1998:

• Gold - TA Instruments Inc / Topometrix Corp - micro-TA;
• Silver - Dionex Corp - EG40 eluent generator;
• Bronze - Thermedics Detection Inc - EZ Flash GC retrofit/upgrade system.

1997:

• Gold – Micromass Ltd - Platform ICP-MS;
• Silver - Hewlett-Packard Co - Genearray optical reader;
• Bronze - PerSeptive Biosystems Inc - Mariner LC-MS.

1996:

• Gold – Thermedics Inc - Flash 2D GC;
• Silver - Hewlett-Packard Co - Series 1100 HPLC;
• Bronze - Varian Inc - Saturn 2000 GC-MS.