Conference report for the DAS travel award: HPLC 2017

HPLC 2017 Prague Symposium, 45^th International Symposium on High Performance Liquid Phase Separations and Related Techniques
Participants supported by the DAS travel award: Sophie Bravo-Veyrat¹, Laura Akbal¹, Michel Raetz¹, David Ruskic¹ and Fabio Stephan² (¹University of Geneva and ²HES-SO Valais-Wallis)
http://www.hplc2017-prague.org

The conference "HPLC 2017" is famous for being the world leading forum for the information exchange among researchers working with separations in liquid phases and supercritical fluids. The conference is organized annually around the globe, and this year it took place in Prague from 18 to 22 June. It was an amazing opportunity to develop our professional network. 1354 participants from 54 countries attended the conference, providing a diverse international professional environment. We had the chance to meet very interesting scientists, and sometimes to put a face on a well-known name.

The conference program covered all aspects of fundamental and experimental approaches, novel instrumentation, column technologies and cutting-edge applications and instrumentation. One of the main goals of this symposium was to facilitate the active participation of young researchers. Thus, four of us got the opportunity to give a talk and/or present a poster. Some of us also followed the short courses given by experts in their field.

Even though we came from different research fields, all of us found intriguing topics from the more than 200 lectures and 600 posters presented. We all had great discussions and found answers to our questions, or potential new research directions. Our talks and poster created discussions and gave the opportunity to receive important inputs from different perspectives. We had the pleasure to see that our work was of interest for other scientists. During the conference, we dedicated all of our time to meet new people.

Another important and interesting part of the conference was the possibility to meet leading vendors presenting their latest technical innovations, a good occasion to update our knowledge on state-of-the-art technologies. Tutorials, given by top experts at the beginning of each session, allowed us to get an insight into new methods, instrumentation and techniques, and sometimes about a slightly different field, which is important for our scientific culture. Recent achievements in method development and the coupling of various techniques with mass spectrometry were highlighted in the talks as well as in the poster sessions.

We want to thank the DAS board for supporting our participation at the HPLC 2017 Prague Symposium as it was a great experience for all of us!