Laboratory events news
Everything, everywhere, all at once: why SinS Brighton 2025 is the singular must-go-to event this year
Jan 29 2025
International Labmate in conversation with SinS Brighton 2025 Conference Chair, Emeritus Professor John Langley CChem CSci FRSC
The roots of the Solutions in Science (SinS) conference first took hold in 2020, growing out from a series of events which had been previously organised by the Separation Science Group (SSG) of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). The SSG had ─ for many years ─ run a variety of meetings with some success, both for itself but also alongside other interest groups (IGs) within the RSC.
“The IGs in question ranged from food to water research to separation science and many others, but the realisation started to dawn on these communities that we were all having to attend too many meetings and we were far too siloed. Too many of these were just single day affairs,” said Professor John Langley, SinS Conference Chair, and a leading chromatography and mass spectrometry scientist.
“The prevailing ecosystem of multiple meetings was putting additional pressure on us all to find the time for these meetings but also asking more and more from exhibitors. It was becoming difficult to go back to the same people and the same sponsors to co-fund these, and then COVID hit.
“After the pandemic many of us resolved that we did not want to come back to the status quo and to the same programme of one-day meetings. We decided we wanted to create something bigger, interdisciplinary and more inclusive, but also recognised that the links that we may have had with other groups was only because we’d met people indirectly, not because there was an event in the sector that really fostered networking between disciplines,” he said.
John’s view was that while we naturally form relationships with people, and groups, working in similar fields but there were too many other groups [across the RSC] that didn’t interact at all because there were no personal links ─ or indeed a single event ─ it just didn’t exist. To bring people together with diverse analytical skillsets, expertise, and a variety of application areas, in order to learn and draw from each other. There was a gap in the current landscape.
“So, the idea came from there. That every second year we could pool the efforts of the SSG committee and direct it into one bigger meeting, one that could pull together the groups that we currently work with and then – hopefully – attract those other groups within the RSC, as well as our sister societies, eg., the British Mass Spectrometry Society and Chromatographic Society and bring us all into one space, where we could improve networking opportunities, and where it would be a better experience for us all.
“...having a multi-day event that allowed for thinking time to absorb the content and the necessary extended networking time to address key challenges together...”
“Alongside those career and science advantages, we could also consider other important factors such as sustainability, carbon footprint, and reducing unnecessary travel – and really importantly post-COVID, I felt – having a multi-day event that allowed for thinking time to absorb the content and the necessary extended networking time to address key challenges together. It is huge, particularly for those early career research scientists because being face-to-face is really key to how people build significant relationships that will last them their whole careers,” he added.
SinS, as a concept, gives the UK a unique forum for the broader consideration of analytical science, which John thinks has been missing down the years: “we haven’t had this sort of big ‘get-together analytical meeting’ with everyone in one place to talk about things that matter to us all in our work as analysts.”
Call for papers SinS Brighton 2025 is open
The deadline for submission of an abstract is 15 March 2025. To find out more, or submit an abstract, please visit: www.ilmexhibitions.com/sins/abstract-submission
The conversations during the 2020 lockdown to create a ‘big tent comeback-meeting’ led to the first SinS event in Cardiff, in 2023. A return trip to the Welsh capital was planned for this year at the same venue, the baroque-style Portland-stoned Cardiff City Hall, sited right around the corner from Cardiff University’s School of Chemistry. However, a planned refurbishment of the building sadly prevented this.
“Cardiff really worked as a location, and it was disappointing that we could not go back again. But it was an amazing success ─ to attract the 200-plus attendees ─ for what was essentially a cold-start meeting. Maybe we could have welcomed more but it was big enough that it still really worked as a meeting.
“The buzz in that room was phenomenal continuing for the entire length of the meeting. It was such a good feeling to see a room of people that were able to connect and network in that way. The setup worked so well for all the exhibitors, those with posters, and then just the fact that were tables everywhere for people to be able to sit down and talk.
“We had put together a very strong programme, both on the lecture side and posters, but with the exhibitor side too,” he said.
Importantly, there was an even split of female to male speakers, and from academia, charities, government agencies, funders, and industry. John stressed that the intention in 2023 was not to have a solely academically focused event but one which took in diversity, networking, and the chance to grow communities inside and out of both academia and industry and then to build on that work for the 2025 event.
One particular achievement of the SinS Cardiff 2023 event was that the conference committee chose to accept about 40 per cent of presentations by early career scientists.
“We very much wanted to promote opportunities for early career scientists and were fortunate to bring in great sponsorship that also allowed us to provide some bursary grants for other early career scientists to attend the meeting as well [that may not otherwise have had access to travel budgets]” John said.
This July, SinS Brighton 2025 will decamp to The Brighton Centre which sits on the city’s beachfront. The venue is bigger and better, according to John, but still has a small city-feel, like Cardiff offering the same sort of vibe being compact, friendly and a destination, especially at that time of year. John added, hopefully: “There’s probably going to be less walking than Cardiff too.”
Overall, as a location Brighton has strong transportation connections, by air, road, and rail, and equally for visitors from the continent.
“We took it to a non-central venue as these have typically been the places for conferences and it would be nice to see somewhere new. Other cities deserve a look-in, and it brings important benefits to them too. Brighton was a great choice given its excellent transport links with Gatwick only 15 minutes way by train,” said John.
Planning for the event is well advanced and there are already double the number of RSC special interest groups involved at this stage, compared to SinS Cardiff 2023. In addition, there will be representation from several of the RSC’s journals that have come on board and stand bookings by exhibitors has also surpassed SinS Cardiff 2023. These journals include RSC Advances, Environmental Science: Process & Impacts, Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology, RSC Sustainability, New Journal of Chemistry, Materials Advances, Nanoscale Advances, Analytical Methods and Analyst.
“On the science-organising side, we have retained half those who were involved last time and extended additional places to new special interest groups that want to be involved in the committee work. To name a few we have Ralph Adams from the NMR-DG, and Eamonn Reading from the Analytical Biosciences Group. As well as Stefaniya Velichkova who recently come on board from the Analytical Sciences Community Council.
“There are too many to mention. But it is great to see how we have grown the organisational side to reflect the growth in the nature of the diverse groups,” he said.
John was keen to underscore how SinS should not be viewed as solely a separation science meeting: “While members of the SSG may have got the ball rolling, this meeting is happening because of all of the different groupings have seen the benefit in coming together in one place to deliver a meeting that seeks to solve big problems, generate new questions and provides a singular UK-based forum for a wide range of speakers of differing disciplines.”
The request that has gone out too, John said, for the plenary speakers to present contemporary grand challenges, to speak about how they are tackling them and to invite solutions from the participants.
“In today’s world, we are all facing significant challenges in the ways that we analyse, what we are analysing and the levels and detail to which we now have to analyse materials and fundamentally understand what those materials are.
“A lot of that is driven by the need to now know everything that can be known at a molecular level. This requires an entire range of different analytical techniques which will fit into the SinS profile. So, what we’re asking of our speakers is to tell us what those challenges are that we are facing, and what are the solutions are actually available to us today, but most importantly what challenges are on the horizon that maybe we can’t meet today and for which we need to find solutions soon.
“For instance, one of our premier sessions will be delivered by Dr. David Megson, who is reader in chemistry at Manchester Metropolitan University, and an expert in the environmental field. He will be speaking about his work on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances – aka PFAS or ‘forever chemicals’ – a hot topic at present comprising almost 15,000 different structures. The concentration levels at which we must identify and monitor these chemicals at is incredibly low but, of course, the potential negative impacts of these materials are of urgent concern,” John added.
“There is a school of thought that advocates removing flourine from everyday use altogether. This is one potential future. But it would be one where you will not have a non-stick frying pan anymore or be able to use of PTFE tape that every plumber needs to stop your taps from dripping. All those sorts of things would just go away.
“The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency banned most uses of dichloromethane (DCM) on July 8, 2024. Remember, this is one of the of the world’s most highly used solvents. So, there’s substantial change coming that we all need to work with.”
Planning for the remainder of the programme is well advanced while the final plenary session is yet to be confirmed it will be around the impact of big data.
“...we have mountains and mountains – and yet more swamps and lakes – of data all around us. But how we curate and explore it, that is a whole new challenge..."
“This is the one of the biggest challenges across all our different interest groups. We have mountains and mountains – and yet more swamps and lakes – of data all around us. But how we curate and explore it, that is a whole new challenge. Again, because we have worked too often in our individual silos and communities, we have all built our own different solutions.
“One of my main hopes is that by developing the SinS philosophy, the event will become the primary forum to discuss these different solutions across disciplines such that we can all help each other in the disparate ways in which we approach our work – but especially with managing these data sets.
“Really it is all about this collaboration – this cross-pollination – that I think is one of those key drivers for the success of the meeting. We certainly saw that with SinS Cardiff 2023,” he added.
John’s enthusiasm for the conference is apparent alongside his clear passion for enhancing science communication across the wide variety of disciplines that attend.
“Something you are doing may be applicable to someone else’s work which might be in a completely different discipline or sector. But fundamentally, it might also be the same science, that all could be applied in a similar way to a new problem.
“You know that idea of ‘can you point me in right direction?’. In Cardiff, it was great to see so much of that kind of cross-pollination of ideas and techniques.
“SinS, as a concept, works because we work together so well,” John concluded.
It is clear that the shared mission between the SinS 2025 organising committee and International Labmate Exhibitions, as the conference organiser, is to deliver an event which is the peer or superior to SinS 2023 or indeed any other event operating in the current space. Indeed, John said of the Cardiff conference that it was genuinely the best meeting he had ever helped to deliver, large or small. But that Brighton will be better and bolder.
“From the very first conversations back in 2020, the whole idea was that we wanted a meeting about networking and communities and getting people to talk. And once everyone was in that room, boy did they talk! And talk, and talk. Inside the room. Outside the room. Everywhere you looked. Fantastic.”
Practical choices helped too in that regard with the arrangements for the opening dinner chosen to be buffet style – rather than a sit-down affair. It was hoped that this format would provide for a more fluid social event and that simple step in the planning paid off. Delegates were able to walk around, meet and speak to many more of their colleagues than would have possible in a more formal setting. And conversations went on long into the night, “we even had people dancing on the tables. They were really going for it.”
Immediate delegate feedback proved genuinely positive from the get-go with many people asking: ‘When is the next one? And where is the next one?’… the fact of coming back together, face-to-face, post-COVID was met with a lot of enthusiasm.
“It was such a good feeling to be back post-COVID but the more important thing for me is that we are still seeing people at the start of their careers who are catching up on the networking side of things. There has been a whole generation of post-graduates, and early career scientists, who have lost out on the opportunities to attend meetings and build vital relationships,” said John.
“One important benefit is that early career researchers can meet – as peers – those in other generations that they may have looked up to because they have only been able to read their papers. Perhaps they have had them on pedestals. But at a meeting like SinS, it offers everyone the chance to interact as human beings on a level.
“And so, things can rapidly evolve into regular human relationships rather than solely a paper-based one. Honestly, we are still catching up in that space [since COVID] and I think that’s where SinS can deliver over and above many other meetings,” John said.
“If you only do one important thing today then register now for SinS Brighton 2025 and we’ll catch-up at the conference and in much better weather – I can’t wait.”
Biography - Emeritus Professor John Langley
Emeritus Professor John Langley was the head of the University of Southampton’s state-of-the-art chromatography-mass spectrometry (MS) facility in its school of chemistry and chemical engineering until his retirement in 2024. Emeritus Professor Langley had previously been Head of Characterisation and Analytics in the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Southampton.
During his time at Southampton, he developed his own research group ─ www.soton.ac.uk/~gjl ─ and worked on MS problems that spanned the spectrum of chemical sciences.
John gained his PhD in MS from the University of London in 1988 and was the first ─ and remains the only person ─ to have been Chair of the British Mass Spectrometry Society and Chair of the Royal Society of Chemistry Separation Science Group, he was also President of the International Mass Spectrometry Foundation (2018-2022).
In 2021, Professor Langley was awarded the British Mass Spectrometry Society Medal in recognition for his outstanding contributions to the promotion of MS. And then in 2024 Professor Langley was honoured again with the Chromatographic Society’s prestigious Silver Jubilee Medal, the awards panel saying of him:
“Professor Langley has dedicated decades to ground-breaking research in the separation and detection of polymeric materials, organometallics, and various pharmaceuticals and biopharmaceuticals.”
His contributions extend beyond the laboratory, as exemplified by leadership roles within the UK separation science space and his advocacy for diversity and inclusion, and his work on the editorial board of Wiley’s Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry.
Emeritus Professor Langley is a Chartered Chemist and a Chartered Scientist, he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and is Chair of its Separation Science Group.
Professor Langley was interviewed by Alan Booth, Senior Editor at International Labmate
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