Tenth Winter Symposium on Chemometrics (WSC10)

Abstract

The Tenth Winter Symposium on Chemometrics (WSC10) was held in Samara from February 29 to March 4, 2016. The WSC is a biannual international meeting that is organized and supported by the Russian Chemometrics Society; it is the only chemometrics conference held in Russia. Since the first meeting in 2002, the WSC has been internationally recognized for its solid scientific content and intensive social program. Its scope traditionally covers a broad range of theoretical aspects and practical applications of modern data analysis including quantitative and qualitative analysis of complex mixtures, design of experiments, image analysis, quality control, process analytical chemistry, medical diagnostics, environmental monitoring, and many others. The conference brings together both academic scientists and industrial experts providing a perfect format for their fruitful communication. Traditionally, the WSC is friendly to young scientists beginning to carve their way in the field of data analysis. Students' and exploratory research works can be found alongside neighboring presentations of venerable chemometricians. WSC10 was hosted by Samara State Technical University (SSTU), the largest technical university of the Volga region. The local organizing committee was a university group, being one of the new Russian centers of chemometrics. SSTU hosted the conference for the second time, having previously hosted WSC5 10 years before. The conference took place in a suburban resort that included conference facilities, comfortable houses, full-board meal, and sport activities (cross-country skiing and fencing tournament) for the participants (Figure 1). The conference was concluded by an excursion over the city of Samara. The conference was prefaced by a 2-day school, where experienced lecturers explained chemometrics theory and practice to beginners. The school is an important feature of WSC that serves for popularization of chemometrics in Russia. The classes included lectures followed by practical seminars performed in Russian language. This time, the practice exercises were conducted using new on-line chemometrics software www.tptcloud.com developed in SSTU. The conference scientific program consisted of 26 oral and 24 poster presentations contributed by about 60 participants from 9 countries distributed between 4 meeting days. The key lectures were presented by David Hopkins (USA), Riccardo Leardi (Italy), Alexey Pomerantsev (Russia), Ludovic Duponchel (France), and Jose Manuel Amigo (Denmark). The main themes reported by WSC authors in 2016 were development of new methods, algorithms and software for multivariate data analysis, process chemometrics, spectroscopy, as well as environmental, food, and other applications. A special session was devoted to chemometrics education in different countries. The best presentation of a young scientist (A. Melenteva) and 3 best posters (the first place—M. Khannanov, the second place—A. Skvortsov, and 3 posters shared the third place—V. Belikova, Yu. Monakhova, and M. Khaydukova) were honored with special sponsor prizes at the conference closing dinner. Several works were submitted as manuscripts to be published in this special issue of Journal of Chemometrics. This successful series of conferences will be continued in February 2018 when WSC will come to Saint-Petersburg—one of the most beautiful cities in Russia. WSC11 will be held at spectacular location on the Karelian Isthmus not very far from the city, and the organizers will be glad to welcome all chemometricians, from beginners to established ones, theoreticians and practitioners, as well as those who are local and those who from all over the world. As usual, the conference will be preceded by an intensive chemometrics school for young scientists. Find more about WSC10 at the conference website: http://wsc.chemometrics.ru/wsc10/