20th October 2023 | Author: Robin J. Blagg
SMASH (Small Molecule NMR Conference) is always one of the best annual conferences attended by the Oxford Instruments Magnetic Resonance Applications Team. Not only are there four days of great science (much of which is relevant to benchtop NMR spectroscopy), but the conference is usually located in a wonderful location in Europe or North America.
SMASH 2023 took place in mid-September in Baveno on the shore of Lake Maggiore in northern Italy; and was attended by Robin Blagg (Applications Team Leader, High Wycombe, U.K.) and Sheida Rajabi (Applications Scientist, Wiesbaden, Germany), along with our European Sales Manager Chris Mason and Graziella Gariano from Alfatest, our Italian distributor.
Highlights of the scientific content included sessions on hyperpolariation; the development of new NMR methods (which also featured a test of the Italian Emergency Alert system on everyone’s mobile phones); and the analysis of complex mixtures using NMR spectroscopy.
Together with poster presentations covering a range of topics related to the NMR of small molecules. Many of these used, or were applicable to benchtop NMR spectroscopy.
Of particular interest were the two workshops. One led by Claude Guillou from the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, discussing how benchtop and high-field NMR spectroscopy is used by customs agencies across the EU for the identification of novel psychoactive substances (NPS). The other discussing how to use NMR spectroscopy to perform mechanistic studies, and led by Jordi Bures (Univ. Manchester) and Andrew Hall (Univ. Edinburgh).
Beyond the science there was the opportunity to explore the area, we chose to take a boat out to some of the islands, while other attendees went for walks in the mountains or swimming in the lake.
Finally congratulations to all the poster prize winners: Annabel Flook (Univ. Edinburgh), Emma Gates (Univ. Manchester) and Justinas Sakas (Univ. Edinburgh); and also to Asad Saib (Univ. Bath), winner of the inaugural Daneen Tiare Angwin-Kaerner Scholarship for his work monitoring chemical reactions using flow NMR. Asad will be continuing this work on the X-Pulse Broadband Benchtop NMR Spectrometer once he joins Oxford Instruments as an Applications Scientist in October.
We’re already looking forward to SMASH 2024 in Burlington, Vermont, USA; and hope too see lots of friends both old and new there.
Robin Blagg,
Applications Scientist, Oxford Instruments
Robin Blagg is the applications team leader at Oxford Instruments Magnetic Resonance. Robin completed his first degree at the University of York, then obtained his PhD in organometallic chemistry at the University of Bristol, and then undertook post-doctoral research at the Universities of Sussex, Manchester, and East Anglia; before joining Oxford Instruments in October 2020. Robin is a member of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), and serves on the committee of the RSC NMR Discussion Group.
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