NIH-NHGRI support is requested to defray participant costs for a special ACS symposium entitled """"""""Microscale Separations and Analysis,"""""""" which will focus on the cutting edge of technology development for genomic and proteomic analysis. This one-day symposium (August 27, 2001) will be held in Chicago, IL as part of the 2001 annual meeting of the American Chemical Society. The panel of speakers is highly interdisciplinary and includes both academic and industrial scientists (Annelise Barron, Chemical Engineering, Northwestern; Robert Austin, Physics, Princeton; Andrea Chow, Chemical Engineering, Caliper Technologies; Harold Craighead, Applied and Engineering Physics, Cornell; Jed Harrison, Analytical Chemistry, University of Alberta; Stevan Jovanovich, Mechanical Engineering, Molecular Dynamics; Barry L. Karger, Analytical Chemistry, Northeastern University; Stephen Quake, Applied Physics, Caltech; J. Michael Ramsey, Analytical Chemistry, Oak Ridge National Laboratories; Gary Slater, Physics, University of Ottawa; Jonathon Sweedler, Analytical Chemistry, University of Illinois; Stephen Williams, Analytical Chemistry, ACLARA BioSciences; Edward Yeung, Analytical Chemistry, University of Iowa/Ames Laboratory). In all, the participating scientists include 7 engineers and physicists and 6 analytical chemists, all of whom head research programs focused on development and application of technology for genomic and/or proteomic analysis in capillaries and microfluidic devices. The goal of the symposium is not only to educate the broader chemical sciences community in the exciting challenges of the area, but also to bring together the analytical chemists, who might have attended this meeting anyway, with the physicists and engineers who would have been highly unlikely to attend. This will promote idea exchange and collaborations across disciplines. Three industrial speakers and two scientists from National laboratories are included in the program, to highlight how technology development for the genome centers through collaboration and commercialization. 15% of the speakers are women, reflective of the generally low female representation in this field at the Principal Investigator level. However, given the """"""""star quality"""""""" of many of the speakers and the great diversity of ACS attendees, it is hoped that attendance of the symposium will be high and that the event will attract more women and under-represented minority scientists to the field.
