Dr. Veronika Ruth Meyer, EMPA, receives IUPAC 2017 Distinguished Women in Chemistry or Chemical Engineering Award

To celebrate International Women′s Day on March 8, 2017, IUPAC announced the awardees of the IUPAC 2017 Distinguished Women in Chemistry or Chemical Engineering:

• Prof. Misako Aida, Hiroshima University, Japan
• Prof. Lifeng Chi, Soochow University, Suzhou, China
• Prof. M. Concepción Gimeno, Institute of Chemical Synthesis and Homogeneous Catalysis (ISQCH), CSIC-University of Zaragoza, Spain
• Dr Jaqueline Kiplinger, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, United States
• Prof. Zafra Lerman, Malta Conferences Foundation, Evanston, IL, United States
• Prof. Thisbe K. Lindhorst, Universität Kiel, Germany
• Prof. Ekaterina Lokteva, M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia
• Prof. Yvonne Mascarenhas, University of Sao Paulo, Sao Carlos, Brazil
• Dr Veronika Ruth Meyer, Empa St. Gallen (retired), Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Switzerland
• Prof. Ingrid Montes-González, University of Puerto Rico, San Juan, Puerto Rico
• Prof. Frances Separovic, University of Melbourne, Australia
• Prof. Jihong Yu, Jilin University, China

The awards program, initiated as part of the 2011 International Year of Chemistry celebrations, was created to acknowledge and promote the work of women chemists/chemical engineers worldwide. These 12 awardees have been selected based on excellence in basic or applied research, distinguished accomplishments in teaching or education, or demonstrated leadership or managerial excellence in the chemical sciences. The Awards Committee has been particularly interested in nominees with a history of leadership and/or community service during their careers.

An award ceremony will take place during the IUPAC World Chemistry Congress in São Paulo, Brazil, coinciding with the special symposium on Women in Chemistry and reception in honor of the recipients. See www.iupac2017.org for details.

Professor Vanderlan da S. Bolzani, co-chair of the special symposium, remarked: “We are especially pleased with this year’s awardees and eager to recognize their contribution in a special session organized for the 2017 IUPAC Congress. Each year since 2011, the award has gained more attention in the community. During this year’s Congress and with the help of IUPAC leadership, we plan to continue this trend. My hope is to make every day International Women’s Day!”.

A list of recipients of the award since its inception in 2011 may be found HERE 

SCS congratulates Veronika R. Meyer for this prestigeous award

Following an apprenticeship as laboratory assistant, Veronika R. Meyer studied chemistry at the University of Applied Sciences in Burgdorf, Switzerland. From 1976 to 1998 she studied and worked at University of Bern, where she completed in 1989 her PhD thesis in chemistry. Afterwards she spent postdoctoral stays at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, and at the University of Delaware, USA. In 1996 she submitted her habilitation at the University of Bern, where she was teaching various topics of analytical chemistry in particular on High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC). From 1998 to 2015 she worked at Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research in St. Gallen. 

Veronika R. Meyer is author of numerous papers in international journals resulting in a Hirsch factor of 18 as listed by Web of Science. Her papers are primarily dealing with various aspects of practical applications of HPLC and with issues of quality assurance and control of analytical methods. However, much more relevant are her textbooks for HPLC practitioners that she authored in English 2 and German language. These single author volumes must be considered as standard texts for scientists involved with practical applications of HPLC.