44th International Symposium on Capillary Chromatography - Invited speakers

The 44th International Symposium on Capillary Chromatography (ISCC), the premier meeting for pressure and electrodriven microcolumn separations and related techniques, will be held May 17 – 22, 2026 in the Congress Centre, Riva del Garda, Italy.

The program will include plenary lectures, keynote lectures by young scientists, prominently featured poster presentations, an instrument exhibition displaying the latest instrumental innovations, and a highly attractive social program offering opportunities to meet with world-renown scientists.

KeyDates

• February 20, 2026: Abstract deadline for an Oral Presentation to be included in the Book of Abstracts.
• March 15, 2026: Abstract deadline for a Poster Presentation to be included in the Book of Abstracts.
• April 06, 2026: Within this date, information will be given on the acceptance of oral and poster presentations.
  • Please remember that if you are submitting an abstract for an oral or poster presentation, you must pay the registration fee by April 19, 2026 (with the reduced fee by April 12, 2026). If no payment is made by April 22, 2026, the abstract will not be included in the program and book of abstracts.
• April 12, 2026: Deadline for Reduced Registration
• April 22, 2026: Preliminary Program
• May 17, 2026: GCxGC and LCxLC Courses
• May 18, 2026: 21st GCxGC Symposium
• May, 19 2026: 44th ISCC Symposium

Program

Invited Speakers 44th ISCC

Plant volatiles and capillary gas chromatography: a never-ending story of continuous innovation

• Carlo Bicchi
  • Carlo Bicchi has been Full Professor of Pharmaceutical Biology at the Faculty of Pharmacy of University of Turin since 1990. His main field of research is development of analytical technologies for biologically active specialized metabolites in plant matrices (essential oils, terpenoids, phenolic compounds and alkaloids) and aroma profiling and fingerprinting of important industrial food crops (coffee, cocoa, hazelnuts, olive oil and tea). He focused his studies on Sample preparation; Gas chromatography (GC, GC-MS, Fast-GC, Multidimensional GC and new stationary phases), Enantioselective GC, High pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC, HPLC-MS), Supercritical fluid extraction and chromatography (SFE and SFC), Chemometric methods, fingerprinting and profiling.His scientific activity is documented by 360 publications in international Journals, and more than 400 plenary lectures, keynote lectures and communications and seminars. He has been Editor, Associate Editor, member of the advisory board of international journals and member of permanent scientific board of several International Scientific foundations and symposia.He was awarded with i) the 2018 Giovanni Dugo’s medal from the Italian Chemical Society (GISS), ii) the 2019 Arnaldo Liberti’s Medal from the Italian Chemical Society (DAC), iii) the 2021 COLACRO Medal from the Latino-American Association of Chromatography and Related Techniques, and iv) the 2022 ISEO Medal of Honor from the International Symposium on Essential Oils (ISEO) Medal Committee.

Future Trends in Capillary nano-HPLC Column Technology

• Gert Desmet
  • Gert Desmet has a Master’s degree and PhD in chemical engineering from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Brussels, Belgium, where he currently is a full professor. His research mainly focuses on the miniaturization and automation of separation methods, as well as on the investigation and the modeling of flow effects in chromatographic systems. He has been the author or co-author of more than 450 peer-reviewed papers. He currently is the Deputy-director of the Solvay Institute for Chemistry, is an Associate Editor for the journal "Analytical Chemistry" and was the recipient of an ERC Advanced Grant. He is also a member of the permanent scientific committee of the international HPLC and ISC conference series.

New approaches to capillary LC column development

• James Grinias
  • James Grinias is a Professor of Chemistry & Biochemistry at Rowan University. His research interests primarily focus on liquid-phase separations, especially the fundamentals of column and instrument design in liquid chromatography. For over a decade, he has focused on increasing the efficiency and throughput of these separations, especially with capillary-scale columns.More recently, his group has focused on instrument miniaturization, especially for portable liquid chromatography separations, two-dimensional separation techniques, and microfluidic platforms. He received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2014 and then moved onto a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Michigan until the end of 2016. James has received a number of awards for his work to date, including the HPLC 2013 Csaba Horváth Award, an NSF CAREER grant, an NIH MIRA grant, the 2021 Satinder Ahuja Young Investigator in Separation Science Award, and the 2021 LCGC Emerging Leader Award.He was also named to The Analytical Scientist’s “Top 40 Under 40” Power List in 2018 and 2022. In addition to his research interests, James has held several service roles within the research community. He currently serves as an Associate Editor for Journal of Separation Science. He recently served as both the President of the Chromatography Forum of Delaware Valley and the Chair of the American Chemical Society Subdivision on Chromatography and Separations Chemistry. James also regularly serves on the organizing committee of the HPLC Symposium Series.

Slalom Chromatography Returns: Powering Breakthroughs in Large DNA/RNA Characterization for Cell and Gene Therapy

• Fabrice Gritti
  • Dr. Fabrice G. Gritti earned his Ph.D. in Chemistry and Physics of Condensed Matter from the University of Bordeaux I in 2001. He subsequently worked as a research scientist with Professor Georges Guiochon at the University of Tennessee, a collaboration that lasted until 2014. In 2015, he joined Waters Corporation as a consultant scientist, where he continues to contribute his expertise to advancing chromatographic science.Dr. Gritti’s research focuses on solid-to-liquid adsorption thermodynamics and mass transfer in chromatographic porous media. His overarching goal is to deepen the understanding of separation and mass transfer mechanisms in existing liquid chromatography (LC) techniques, while driving the development of new column and system technologies that are firmly grounded in scientific principles and responsive to societal needs.Throughout his career, Dr. Gritti has authored more than 300 peer-reviewed publications, delivered over 95 keynote lectures, and presented more than 30 seminars worldwide on the advancement of chromatographic sciences. His contributions have been recognized with numerous awards, including: The Chromatographic Society Jubilee Medal (2013), The JFK Huber Lecture Award (2019), The Eastern Analytical Symposium Award for Outstanding Achievements in Separation Science (2022), The Csaba Horvath Memorial Award (2023), The A.J.P. Martin Medal (2024).

Miniaturized HPLC-MS Workflows to Characterize the Protein Cargo of Extracellular Vesicles: a Viable Approach to Study Intercelluar Communication

• Christian Huber
  • Christian Huber trained as an analytical chemist at the University of Innsbruck focusing on chromatographic separation methods for biopolymers. After a PostDoc in Csaba Horváth’s group at Yale University in 1996, he obtained lecturing qualification in analytical chemistry at the University of Innsbruck in 1997. As an associated professor of analytical chemistry at the University of Innsbruck from 1997 to 2002, he developed monolithic, capillary-scale stationary phases for hyphenating high efficiency nucleic acid-, peptide-, and protein separations to mass spectrometry. From 2002-2008 he held a position as professor for analytical chemistry at Saarland University, where he started working in the field of multidimensional chromatography as well as proteome/metabolome analysis and mass spectrometry data mining. Since 2008, he is a professor of chemistry for biosciences at the University of Salzburg. His current research interests include proteome and metabolome analysis of biological models for disease as well as in-depth (therapeutic) protein characterization by means of HPLC and MS.

High Throughput Capillary LC and Application to Reaction Screening, Biopharmaceutical Analysis and Enzyme Engineering

• Robert Kennedy
  • Robert Kennedy is the Willard Distinguished University Professor of Chemistry at the University of Michigan. His research has combined his interest in biology with chemical analysis, separations and microfluidics. A theme of his group has been development of new chemical analysis tools that can be used for engineering enzymes, monitoring neurotransmitters in the brain, and studying the secretion of insulin. Key technical areas including ultra-high pressure LC, droplet microfluidics, and mass spectrometry.His work has been recognized by several awards including the ACS Award in Chromatography and the Ralph Adams Award in Bioanalytical Chemistry. He has held several service posts including Department Chair and is presently Associate Editor of Analytical Chemistry and ACS Measurement Science Au.

Miniaturization of liquid chromatography: from micropacked to open tubular LC

• Fernando Mauro Lanças
  • Professor Fernando Mauro Lanças is the leader of the Chromatography Group and a full Professor at the Institute of Chemistry of the University of São Paulo at São Carlos, Brazil. He started and is Chairman of several scientific meetings, including COLACRO and SIMCRO, and is co-Chairman of WARPA. Prof. Lanças advised more than 130 Ph.D. and Master's theses; published more than 400 papers; 20 book chapters and 8 books as the only author.His primary research interest is currently focused on the complete miniaturization and automation of sustainable sample preparation – chromatography - mass spectrometry techniques and the practical implementation of the Unified Chromatography concept.

From flame to fame: strategies to elevate the sensitivity and reliability of GC-FID

• Jim Luong
  • Jim Luong is a Fellow of Analytical Science, Core R&D of The Dow Chemical Company.In his four-decade career at Dow, Luong has held critical positions in manufacturing and R&D. Luong was involved in the start-up and expansion of several world-scale chemical plants in different geographical locations including Canada, Argentina, Thailand, and Kuwait. He is also a key contributor to Dow’s Fort Saskatchewan Path2Zero project; the world’s first net-zero emissions integrated ethylene cracker and derivatives site in Alberta, Canada.As an analytical chemist, Luong practices several techniques such as mass spectrometry, differential mobility spectrometry, inductively coupled plasma spectrometry, and is most passionate with gas chromatography (GC). Some key areas of research and innovations include column stationary phase development, ultra-trace analysis, microfluidic-enabled GC, hyphenated techniques, MDGC, GC×GC, and novel selective detection strategies such as chemiluminescence, post-column reaction with catalysis, and photo diode array.Luong has authored or co-authored over 90 articles in peer-reviewed journals, three book chapters, and holds three patents. Luong is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, served on the RSC’s Analytical Methods Editorial Board and currently on the journal’s Advisory Board. Luong is a recipient of the 2007 Northern Alberta Institute of Technology Award of Distinction, and the 2013 Chemical Institute of Canada’s Maxxam Award, an annual award conferred to a Canadian scientist who has made a significant contribution to analytical chemistry. More recently, Luong was named the Top 100 analytical scientists in the Power List 2019, 2020, and 2021, published by the Analytical Scientist.

New materials for the selective extraction of contaminants from environmental samples

• Rosa Maria Marcé
  • Prof. Rosa Maria Marcé is Full Professor in Analytical Chemistry of the Analytical and Organic Chemistry Department at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV) in Tarragona since 2010 and Distinguished Professor of URV since 2018.Her main interest is the development of new chromatographic methods to determine contaminants of emerging concern in environmental samples. This interest includes the development and application of new and sustainable materials for the sorptive extraction techniques to align with the Green Analytical Chemistry. These materials improve the selectivity of the analytical methods and the retention of challenging compounds, such as the polar and ionic ones. These materials, combined with high-tech liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry techniques significantly contribute to solve analytical problems of environmental samples.The developed methods have been applied to monitor pollutants in air, waste and surface water, sludge, dust, biota, etc. In addition, the data from monitoring studies has been valuable to evaluate the effectiveness of wastewater and drinking water treatments, to assess the drug consumption from their concentration in wastewater (named waste water epidemiology) or to calculate the health risk posed by their presence due to intake, inhalation or dermal contact, among others. She has supervised more than 25 doctoral theses. The results of her research have been published in more than 280 papers in peer-reviewed journals and 15 book chapters.

Whole column imaging cIEF coupled to MS for characterization of native proteins

• Janusz Pawliszyn
  • The primary focus of Professor Pawliszyn's research program is the design of highly automated and integrated instrumentation for isolating analytes from complex matrices and the subsequent separation, identification, and determination of these species.  The primary separation tools used by his group are Gas Chromatography, Liquid Chromatography, and Capillary Electrophoresis coupled to a variety of detection systems, including a range of mass spectrometry techniques as well as ambient ionization techniques. Currently, his research is focusing on the elimination of organic solvents from the sample preparation step and miniaturization of the sampling devices to facilitate on-site monitoring and in-vivo analysis.  Several alternative techniques to solvent extraction are investigated including the use of coated fibers, packed needles, membranes, and supercritical fluids.  Dr. Pawliszyn is exploring the application of computational and modeling techniques to enhance sample preparation, chromatographic separations, and detection performance.  The major area of his interest involves the development and application of imaging detection techniques for microcolumn chromatography, capillary electrophoresis, and microchip separation devices.Professor Pawliszyn has supervised 65 PhD and 70 MS students, and he is an author of over 750 scientific publications and a book on Solid Phase Microextraction. His Hirsch Index (H-index) is 108.  He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Editor-in-Chief of Trends in Analytical Chemistry and Green Analytical Chemistry.

Functionalized and miniaturized monoliths for sample preparation coupled to liquid chromatography

• Valérie Pichon
  • Valérie PICHON, full professor at Sorbonne University (Paris), leads the Department of analytical chemistry (LSABM), a part of the department of Chemistry Biology and Innovation (CBI) located at ESPCI Paris (PSL University, CNRS) and also leads the CBI department.Her main research interests include the development and miniaturization of antibody- or aptamer-based sorbents and molecular or ionic imprinted polymers for the selective extraction of target compounds present in trace amounts in complex samples.She is the author of over 150 publications, 7 book chapters and 3 patents. She is associate editor of Journal of Separation Science. She has received the Analytical Chemistry Department Prize of the French Chemical Society (2001), the Silver Medal of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (2022) and recently the Senior Prize of AfSep, the French Association for Separation Sciences (2023).  

Greener by Design: Transforming Analytical Chemistry with Purpose

• Elia Psillakis
  • Elia Psillakis is Full Professor in Water Chemistry at the School of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Technical University of Crete. Her research focuses on green and sustainable analytical chemistry, sample preparation techniques, and the environmental fate of organic pollutants. In 2007, she received a Fulbright Award and used it at Caltech, USA.In 2025, she was awarded both the Silver Jubilee Medal (The Chromatographic Society) and the Robert Kellner Lecture Award (EuChemS-DAC). In 2021, she featured in the Top 100 Power List of the magazine “The Analytical Scientist”. To date, her investigations have resulted in six book chapters more than 100 publications in ISI Journals, with more than 10500 citations (h-index=52) and six “Top cited article” awards. She is Editor-in-Chief of “Advances in Sample Preparation” from Elsevier and Specialty Chief Editor of “Environmental Analysis” for Frontiers in Analytical Science (Frontiers). Professor Psillakis leads the EuChemS-DAC Sample Preparation Study Group and Network, and is the Founder and Director of the spin-off company ExtraTECH Analytical Solutions. From 2014-2016, she was the Deputy Rector of Academic Affairs and Research at the Technical University of Crete and has served twice as the Director of postgraduate studies.

High Throughput Metabolomics with Microchip CE-MS and Automated Analysis

• J. Michael Ramsey
  • Michael Ramsey, emeritus from UNC, held the Minnie N. Goldby Distinguished Professor of Chemistry Chair at the UNC - Chapel Hill. He was also on the faculty of the Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Applied Physical Sciences. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, the Optical Society of America, the American Chemical Society, and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. Moreover, Dr. Ramsey is the science founder of two public companies, Caliper Technologies (NASDAQ:CALP), renamed Caliper Life Sciences and acquired by PerkinElmer in 2011 and 908 Devices Inc. (NASDAQ:MASS), a company developing revolutionary handheld and desktop tools for acquiring chemical and biochemical information.He is also the science founder of two additional venture financed life sciences tools companies, Genturi Inc. and Codetta Bio Inc., and a founding partner of Move Analytical.  Prof. Ramsey has published over 300 peer-reviewed papers (H-index = 87, i10 index = 214) and presented nearly 600 invited, plenary, or named lectures.  In addition, he has over 210 issued and multiple pending patents.

Emerging applications of CE and CE-MS in biopharmaceutical analysis

• Koen Sandra
  • CEO and Co-owner at RIC group (Kortrijk, Belgium)Visiting Professor, Ghent University (Ghent, Belgium)Koen Sandra received a PhD degree in Biochemistry from the Ghent University, Belgium in 2005. After his PhD, he joined Pronota, a molecular diagnostics company where he was active in developing analytical platforms for disease biomarker discovery and in setting up external collaborations. In 2008, he joined RIC, a company that provides analytical support to the chemical, life sciences and pharmaceutical industries, where he holds the position of CEO. As a non-academic scientist, Koen Sandra is author of over 50 highly cited scientific papers and has presented his work at numerous conferences as an invited speaker.

Coupling GC with SLIM-qTOF-MS for a powerful orthogonal two-dimensional separation of complex samples

• Oliver Schmitz
  • After his doctorate in 1997 in the Department of Analytical Chemistry at the University of Wuppertal (BUW), he spent one year in the Walther-Straub Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the Ludwigs-Maximilians University of Munich and two years as a post-doc in the Division of Molecular Toxicology at the German Cancer Research Centre in Heidelberg.Between 2001 and 2008 Schmitz was been a senior staff member in the Department of Analytical Chemistry at the BUW in Germany. In 2004 he was designated as an associate professor at the BUW, and 2009 he got a full professor in Analytical Chemistry at this university. Between 2010 and 2012 he was the chair of the Analytical Chemistry department at BUW. Since October 2012 Schmitz has been a full professor at the University of Duisburg-Essen and is the chair of the Institute of Applied Analytical Chemistry.2009 he cofounded the company iGenTraX UG which develops new ion sources and units to couple separation techniques with mass spectrometers. In 2018 he founded, together with Agilent Technologies, the Teaching and Research Center for Separation, one of Agilent`s Center of Excellence.Since 2013 Prof. Schmitz is the chairman of the analytica conferences worldwide (China and Vietnam and USA) and a consultant of analytica Munich. In 2023, Schmitz, together with Prof. Michael Lämmerhofer, was chairman of the world's largest conference for separation technologies, the 51st HPLC in Düsseldorf.Prof. Schmitz is recognized as an international expert in analytical chemistry, especially in the development of ion sources, multidimensional chromatography, ion mobility-mass spectrometry and metabolomics.

Challenging Today’s Perceptions and Assumptions About Good ‘Ole GC

• Nicholas Snow

  • Nicholas H. Snow is Dr. Thomas and Mrs. Sylvia Tencza Professor and Chair of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Seton Hall University.  He holds a BS in Chemistry from the University of Virginia and a PhD in Analytical Chemistry from Virginia Tech, where he worked under Professor Harold McNair.  He has been with Seton Hall since 1994 and has mentored 25 PhD and MS students and dozens of undergraduates.  He has authored or co-authored over 100 journal articles and two books, mostly relating to gas chromatography, GC-MS, sample preparation, and most areas of separation science.  He has co-taught over 100 short courses covering the breadth of separation science.

    At Seton Hall he is recipient of the Bishop McQuaid Medal for outstanding long-term university service and the Hakim Faculty Service Medal for service to the faculty.  He was a founding member of the University Teaching Fellows, a GEM Teaching Fellow and Peer Leader in the University Seminar on Mission and has been recognized for outstanding teaching and service to students by the Seton Hall Board of Regents.  As an academic leader, he has served as Middle States Re-accreditation Faculty Chair, Department Chair, Associate Provost, and Director of Sponsored Research.

    He has served on the Governing Board of the Eastern Analytical Symposium for 30 years and was President in 2001.  He is GC Connections Editor of LCGC International, Associate Editor of the Journal of Liquid Chromatography and Related Technologies and he serves on the Editorial Boards of Separations, Journal of Pharmaceutical Innovation and Green Analytical Chemistry.  He is the 2025 recipient of the Eastern Analytical Symposium Award for Outstanding Achievements in Separation Science.

Chromatographic study of specific molecular transfers in soil-plant-insect systems

• Elena E. Stashenko
  • Elena E. Stashenko is a Laureate Professor at the School of Chemistry of the Faculty of Sciences of the Industrial University of Santander (UIS), in Bucaramanga (Colombia). She is the General Director of the Center for Chromatography and Mass Spectrometry (CROM-MASS) and the Center for Research in Biomolecules (CIBIMOL), which are part of the National Center of Excellence CENIVAM. During the last 35 years she has directed undergraduate degree projects, specialization, Master's research works and Doctoral theses, in total, of more than 250 new professionals in Chemistry, Biology, Chemical Engineering, Industrial Engineering and Mechanical Engineering.Elena Stashenko and her collaborators have published more than 300 scientific articles in national and international indexed journals; she is the author of books on essential oils and their analysis, editor of books on aromatic plants, and has written more than ten chapters on essential oils, antioxidants, natural ingredients and their characterization, on bioeconomy and the value chain of aromatic plants, in freely accessible technical books and commercial books; she participated as an inventor, together with other researchers from the Industrial University of Santander, in the processes for obtaining 14 patents. Her work has been recognized through distinctions at UIS and awards in Colombia and abroad. Elena E. Stashenko was the founder of the National School of Chromatography (1998) in Colombia.

Towards the third generation of new metabolomics analysis technology

• Guowang Xu
  • Prof. Dr. Guowang Xu received his Ph.D in Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Jun., 1991. He is also president of Chromatography Committee of Chinese Society of Chemistry, deputy director of the Environmental Exposure Science Committee of the Chinese Society for Environmental Sciences and council member of the Chinese Chemical Society.Prof. Xu has co-written 5 books and published 560+ peer-reviewed papers in the ‘Web of Science Core Collection’ (WoS) indexed journals including PNAS, Nature Protocols, Nature Commun., Nature Methods, Cell Metab., Advance Science, Hepatology, Cancer Res., Anal. Chem., etc., and holds more than 100 China patents.  His main research fields are in the chromatography-mass spectrometry (MS) technique development and the MS-based bulk, single cell and spatial metabolomics/exposomics applications in disease biomarker discovery, traditional Chinese medicines and food safety.

LC×LC Symposium Short Course

The LC×LC course aim to expand the coverage of knowledge on multidimensional chromatographic techniques. The course will be presented by leading experts of LC×LC methodology giving a unique opportunity to learn from experts on theory and applications of this powerful and promising technology.

Combined with the well-established and successful program of GC×GC short course and GC×GC & ISCC symposia, the course represents an additional value for participants to the “Riva” event.

Target Audience

The target audience includes scientists and technologists who have an interest in LC×LC, starting from very beginners to those that are familiar with the technology but need additional information to assess the merits of LC×LC for their particular application, or wish to further interpret the scope of LC×LC.

Sunday - May 17, 2026

14:15 – 14:55 Introduction – Basic principles

• Francesco Cacciola

14:55 – 15:45 Instrumentation

• Miguel Herrero

15:45 - 16:10 Coffee Break

16:10 – 17:00 Optimization

• Miguel Herrero

17:00 – 17:30 Selected Application: Bio/Pharma

• Koen Sandra

17:30 – 18:00 Selected Application: Food & Natural Products

• Francesco Cacciola