Forty-third annual meeting of the German Society for Mass Spectrometry

Abstract

The 43rd annual meeting of the German Society for Mass Spectrometry (Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Massenspektrometrie, DGMS) took place in Halle/Saale, Germany, from March 7 to 10, 2010. The conference was hosted jointly by the Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg and the Leibniz Institute for Plant Biochemistry, Halle. Lectures, poster sessions, lunch seminars, and company exhibitions were held in the main buildings of the University in the heart of 1200-year-old Halle. An impressive conference attendance of 375 participants presented their work in 168 posters, 42 talks, and six plenary lectures. Moreover, 26 companies used the chance to exhibit and discuss novel product developments during the meeting. Participants from various national and international universities, scientific disciplines, and industry gathered to disseminate information about the latest developments in mass spectrometry. The program offered a wide variety of different aspects of mass spectrometry, for example instrument development, new developments in fundamental science, and novel applications of mass spectrometry to address specific questions in chemistry, biology, medicine, geology, forensics, and physics. Four workshops preceded the conference: “Elemental Mass Spectrometry and Proteomics” (J.S. Becker, Julich), “Basics of Mass Spectrometry” (D. Kuck, Bielefeld and M. Schafer, Cologne), “Computational Mass Spectrometry” (S. Neumann, Halle/Saale), and “Bioaffinity Mass Spectrometry in Life Science and Biomedical Analysis” (M. Przybylski, Konstanz and M.O. Glocker, Rostock). The conference was opened in the Audimax Lecture Hall by the president of the DGMS, Jurgen Grotemeyer, the prorector of the Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Joachim Ulrich, and the local organizers, Jurgen Schmidt and Andrea Sinz. Musical interludes by the “Concentus Musicus” string quartet created an appropriate introduction for the award ceremony, in which the Medal of Honor of the DGMS was presented to Hans-Joachim Dietze who unfortunately was unable to attend the ceremony. The prestigious “Wolfgang Paul Lecture“ was given by Peter Roepstorff (Odense, Denmark) who was honored for his significant contributions to the development of mass spectrometry in the life sciences. The topics of the plenary lectures ranged from new developments in ionization techniques to applications of mass spectrometry in toxicology and protein chemistry. Julia Laskin (Richland, USA) talked about soft-landing of Published in the special issue Mass Spectrometry (DGMS 2010) with Guest Editors Andrea Sinz and Jurgen Schmidt.