From January 28 -  January 31, the wellknown Hyphenation Techniques in Chromatography took place in Bruges, Belgium. Since a few years, the focus of the symposium has been expanded with Hyphenated Techniques for Sample Preparation. This were the 13th issue of HTC and the 3rd issue of HTSP. Bruges is a small town in the western part of Flanders in Belgium which is dominated by its medieval patrimonium of churches and official buildings, squares and streets. The symposium took place in Congress Centre Oud Sint-Jan which is one of those old buildings rejuvenated into a congress center. The site is very concise but allowed three parallel sessions, provided ample space for posters and an exhibition on the top level where coffee and lunch was served. Further details can be taken from the symposium website.

I was invited to deliver the 2nd part of a short course on mass spectrometry in the afternoon of January 28. My part dealt with "Optimize your HPLC for LC-MS". In the morning Prof. Edwin DePauw delivered an introduction to mass spectrometry (more on Prof. DePauw you can find here). There were approx. 30 participants in the short-course. They were mainly PhD students from Belgian universities. An updated  PDF-copy of this tutorial can be found via the menu "Publications" under "My Tutorials" (please remember to sign in before you access this menu).

Since my short course took place on January 28, I was unable to attend the HTSP part of the symposium.

The oral program of the HTC started on January 29 and consisted of plenary and keynote lectures, tutorials and oral presentations. Highlights from my perspective were the tutorial by Koen Sandra (RIC, Metablys, Kortrijk Belgium) on Biopharmaceutical Analysis and the keynote lecture by Deidre Cabooter of Catholic University of Leuven) on monoliths. Ian Wilson as always delivered a tutorial on Hypenation for Metabolomics. As always Ian's are highly competent and entertaining which keeps the audience alert.

On Thursday, Prof. Peter Schoenmakers received the prestigious Knox medal from the Separation Science Workgroup of the Royal Chemical Society. The Knox medal honours individuals deserving special recognition of their innovation or influential work in the field of Separation Science for life time achievement in separation science. In his award lecture Peter gave an excellent account of the limits of one-dimensional HPLC and presented an outlook what peak capacity in three physical dimension can achieve. 

My talk was Thursday afternoon. This presentation was adapted from my presentation at the ITP2014 conference in Tenerife. A PDF-Copy of my talk can be found from the menu point "My orals".

Friday morning I had the priviledge to chair a session on food analysis (or foodomics as some people name it today). These were all excellent talks demonstration how separation science in combination with mass spectrometry and multivariate data analysis are indispensable tools nowadays in establishing food safety and authenticiy or in improving and optimization of processes in food manufacturing (selecting microorganisms).

Attendance to the conference was 300+. About 130 posters were presented. 20 exhibitors displayed instruments, columns and supplies, software and literature. Please take further details from the program book from the links on this page.

The symposium was prepared by young Belgian separation scientist from Ghent University and the Free University of Brussels under the direction from Prof. Frederic Lynen with guidance of Rudy Senten and organized with youthful enthusiasm and engagement and with Belgian charm.