Scott Ramos, recipient of the 2021 EAS Award for Outstanding Achievements in Chemometrics, will give his talk on “Multivariate Lessons for the Analytical Chemist”. Join us November 16th at 11am.

Multivariate Lessons for the Analytical Chemist

The field of chemometrics is a relatively new discipline, with its genesis about 40 years ago. Despite this relatively short history, it is now thriving as a vibrant area of research and practice, finding place in a wide variety of chemical applications. Some of the tools of the trade have found acceptance well outside of chemistry. For example, PLS (Partial Least Squares Regression) has become popular in statistics which was lacking methods for data with highly correlated variables.

Two main thrusts have propelled the evolution of chemometrics: innovation and evangelism. The toolkit available to practitioners is continually being augmented by improvements to current methods as well as creation of new algorithms. But, for the field to succeed, it must reach the hands of those who can benefit: the many analysts who utilize these tools in their daily work.

To meet the needs of already-overworked analysts, working solo or in teams, we can identify at least 3 ways in which multivariate tools can become part of the company work practice: hire a dedicated chemometrician, train one or more of staff members in the use of chemometrics, or contract an outside entity to provide chemometrics services.

Whichever the pathway a company chooses, understanding how best to optimize chemometrics models is paramount to success. This talk will review some of these concepts, covering issues that impact model quality, and will reflect on the viability of automating these decisions.