主题：【分享】CACA Dinner Event at Pittcon 2024 San Diego:An evening of fun and camaraderie for separation scientists

CACA Dinner Event at Pittcon 2024 San Diego:
An evening of fun and camaraderie for separation scientists

by Michael Dong

I returned from the 75^th Pittcon 2024 in San Diego on Wednesday night. It was a great conference where  I gave two short courses, attended a session on career development, and spent a lot of time on the exhibition floor. The trip's highlight was the CACA dinner event on Monday, February 26. Here are the details.

Figure 1 A group photo taken after dinner attended by 110 guests. You may recognize some of the big names in separation science. A more complete guest list can be found in the article.

The Venue and the Menu

The venue was the Jasmine Seafood Restaurant, located near Balboa Avenue, about ten miles from the Convention Center. Finding a sizeable Chinese restaurant that could accommodate hundreds of guests with audio/visual was challenging. CACA rented two buses to shuttle all guests from the Convention Center and back to their hotels. Picking the menu was more straightforward since the restaurant offer several 10-course banquet menus at various price levels. As expected, restaurant prices have almost doubled post-pandemics.

The Dinner Event and Programs

The dinner event was packed with programs, including introductions of CACA and sponsors, award presentations, job announcements, and networking activities.

6 pm:        Guest Check-in and registrations

6:30 pm:    Introduction of CACA by President Yi He

6:45 pm    Banquet dinner starts.

7:15 pm:    Sponsor introductions chaired by Tao Jiang  and Dujuan Lu

7:40 pm:    Award presentations chaired by Perry Wang

8:15 pm    Job announcements by companies and graduate student self-introductions (Michael Dong)

8:20 pm    Networking and photo sessions

9:15 pm    Bus Shuttles depart, and guest drop-offs in three locations.

Guest List

Here is a list of guests and participants (to the best of my knowledge and recollections).

CACA Executive Committee Members:

Yi He (President, John Jay, CUNY), Tao Chen (Genentech), Dujuan Lu (SGS), Michael Dong (MWD Consulting), Bingchuan Wei (Genentech), Tao Jiang (Mallinckrodt), Perry Wang (US FDA), Xiang Zhang (U.  Louisville), Chuping Luo (AMT), Jerry Wang (Agile Bio), and Yan-Bo Yang (Biopharm Dev.).

CACA 2024 Awardees:

1. Bifan Chen (Genentech, Young Investigator Award, YIA, award sponsored by Waters and presented by Sam Seal); Professor Ying Ge of U. Wisconsin-Madison nominated Bifan),

2. Emanuela Gionfriddo (U. Buffalo, YIA award sponsored by AMT and presented by Tim Langlois),

3. Samuel Foster (Rowan U., Student Excellence Award, SEA, award sponsored by Mac-Mod Analytical and presented by Ed Faden), Samuel is mentored by Professor Jim Grinias,

4. Zhijun Zhu (U. Wisconsin-Madison, SEA, Award sponsored by Genentech and presented by Tao Chen), Zhijun is mentored by Professor Lingjun Li.

The awards were $1000 (YIA) or $500 (SEA) as travel grants, plus customized all-wood red alder plaques.





Figure 6 The magnificent four Winners of the 2024 CACA Awards (YIA and SEA).



CACA Corporate Sponsors for 2024

Eighteen corporate sponsors support CACA at three levels in 2024: Award/symposium ($2000), advanced ($1500), and basic ($1000). Most sponsors were at the dinner event except two in brackets.

AMT, Mac-Mod, Waters, Genentech, Resolian (formerly Alliance Pharma), Agile Bio (Keystone Bioanalytical), NanoChrom, PolyLC, Frontage, Shimadzu, SGS, CDS Analytical, (SHINE), Agilent Technologies, Daisogel, Pyvot,  and SilcoTek. Representatives from each company are listed, with the presenter of each sponsor's introductory remarks marked in an asterisk and the award presenter labeled with an “^.”

Figure 9 Logos of 2024 CACA corporate sponsors.

Sponsor Guest List

1.  Advance Materials Technology (AMT): Tim Langlois^(Co-founder), Elisabeth Langlois, Stephanie Schuster, Stephanie Rosenburg*,

2.  Mac-Mod Analytical: Geoff Faden* (CEO), Ed Faden^,Mark Woodruff and Ken Butchart,

3.  Waters Corporation: Sam Seal*^(Director MS), HadiMaktabi.

4.  Genentech: Tao Chen*^ (Sr. Principal Scientist),Mengling Wong, Yuchen Fan, Lance Cadang, Pierce Jessen,

5.  Resolian (formerly Alliance Pharma): Aihua Liu* (Sr. Director)

6.  NanoChrom: Xiaodong Liu*(President and CSO), Yan Zhao

7.  Agile Bio: Wang Qunjie* (Founder and CACA EC member)

8.  PolyLC: Chris Wike* (VP), Paul Hayes, Andie Stave, andPatricia Baker.

9.  Frontage Laboratories: Teresa Nguyen* (Dr. Dir. BD),Marianna Tcherpakov

10.  Shimadzu: NiveshMittal*(Prod. Mgr.)

11.  SGS: ChristineGenard, Dujuan Lu*(Mgr., CACA EC member)

12.  CDS Analytical:Guotao Lu* (Division Mgr.), Gary Gu

13.  AgilentTechnologies: John Sausen (Director), Endo Masahiko, Tom Redder* (VP)

14.  Daisogel (DaisoFine Chemicals):Kazusa Kudo*

15.  Pyvot: ScottSilver* (Director)

16.  SilcoTek: LucasPatterson* (Mgr.), Jesse Bischof, Clay Smith

Special Guests

Speakers at the CACA’s Career Development Session on MondayMorning

I also attended the career development oral session sponsoredby CACA that Monday morning, with four speakers delivering lessons learned fromtheir life stories and anecdotes. I found each story to be unique and inspiring.All speakers were at the dinner event.

1.    Chad Briscoe: ExecutiveVP of Cerilion

“Luck has nothing to do with it.”

2.    Wei Gao: Fellow at DowChemical Company

“My journey as a women chemist”

3.    Shane Needham: CEO of VeloxityLabs and National Champion in Bodybuilding

“Achieving success in life, family and career.”

4.    Jonathan Sweedler:Professorat U. Illinois-Champaign and Editor-in-Chief of Analytical Chemistry (Journalfrom ACS)

“Moving through your career as an analytical chemistry faculty.”

Figure 10 Tao Jiang and Chuping Lu chaired the CACA career development session. From l to r: Wei, Chad, Tao, Shane, Jonathan, and Chuping. I learned a lot from this session. I was inspired and moved by their personal career stories and difficult choices. One speech was like a TED talk.

Pittcon
Brad Davis (Pittcon 2025 Chair), Jane Chan (former Pittcon President), Carmen Chong, Corey and Kate Gerheim.
Academia and Industry guests
1.        Dan and Linda Armstrong (U. Texas Arlington)
2.        Susan Olesik (the Ohio U. and Chair of HPLC 2024 Denver)
3.        Janusz Pawliszyn (U. Waterloo)
4.        Jared Anderson (Iowa State U.)
5.        Jim Grinias (U. Rowan)
6.        Stephen G. Weber (U. Pittsburg)
7.        Lingjun Li (U. Wisconsin-Madison)
8.        Janusz Pawliszyn (U. Waterloo, Canada)
9.        John Chasse (Managing Editor of LCGC)
10.        Jonathan Edelman (Chrom Forum of Delaware Valley)
11.        Jack Henion (Founder of Advion and Professor Emeritus from Cornell)
12.        Kim Huynhba (Principal consultant at Pharmalytik)
13.        Louis Yu (CQO of Bausch & Lomb)
Note that not all invited guests are listed.

Figure 11 CACA Committee members and some guests: (from l to r) Jared, Janusz Pawliszyn, Yi, Jim. He, Emanuela, Susan, Michael, Perry, Tao C., Tao J., ?, Yanbo, and Dujuan.

Some Dinner Scenes
Here are some photos of the dinner scenes with photo credits to Dujuan Lu, Yanbo Yang, and others. Some identifications are tentative, as I do not recognize or know many guests. Please send corrections to me directly; I will fix the original document.

Figure 12"The committee table”: Clockwise - Jonathan, Dujuan, Bingchuan, Michael, Tao C, Perry, Jerry, Yi, Tao J, and Bifan.

Figure 13 "The Awardees’ Table" - Clockwise. Samuel, Jim, Victor, Zhijun, Tien, Jared, Susan, Emanuela, and Janusz Pawliszyn.

Figure 14"The speakers’ and professors’ table" - Clockwise Lingjun, Chad, Shane, ?, Lalin, ?, Jack, Stephen, and Jonathan S.

Figure 15 Xiang, ?.Tao J (our roaming ambassador),? , Wei's son, Wei, and others.

Figure 16 "The Pittcon Table and others" Clockwise – Dottie Li (The communication trainer), Kate, Corey, Jane, Carmen, Jintao Xu, Leping Chen, Jin, and others.

Figure 17 Clockwise: Guotao, Gary, Xiaodong, ?, Dujuan (the roaming greeter), ?, Ed, Geoff, ?, Nivesh, and Aihua.

Figure 18 Clockwise: Paul, Kazusa, Chris, Patricia, ?, Stephen, Nathan, andScott.

Figure 19  I do not know most in this table except one is Nan of AbbVie, one is related to Xiaodong, and another is from Agile Bio. Sorry

Figure 20 Clockwise: Chris, ?,?, Tom, Linda, Dan Armstrong, ?, Mengling, and ?.

Figure 22 Clockwise -Sam, Teresa, Marianna, ?. Jessie, ?, Luke, Clay, and John.

Figure 21 Clockwise - Kim, Cynthia, Yan, Tim, Elisabeth, Stephanie R, Stephanie S, Chuping, and Louis.

Public Registrations
Dinner tickets are available to the public at our event website on Eventbrite.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/caca-2024-pittcon-dinner-event-tickets-806850039187.  Compared to the last Pittcon 2023 in Philadelphia, fewer student tickets were sold. The reasons may be multifaceted: fewer international students from China, the West Coast venue for Pittcon, or less enrollment of students in separation science.

Summary

The annual CACA dinner at Pittcon at Jasmine Restaurant in San Diego on Feb 26 was a resounding success. It provided an evening of fine cuisine, camaraderie, and networking for ~110 attendees consisting of separation scientists from industry, academia, students, and sponsoring organizations. Everyone had fun connecting with old friends and new colleagues while learning the latest trends from our sponsors.
Posted by Michael Dong on March 5, 2024.