Lab Group Announces New Award

A new U.S. $10,000 Innovation Award has been established by the Association for Laboratory Automation (ALA, St. Charles, IL, USA), according to a recent announcement.

The award will recognize conference participants who present innovative laboratory technologies or new, highly useful technology advances and applications. Podium presentations displaying vision, originality, seminal technology, applications, and strategies will qualify for the award. The winning presentation author will be selected and presented with the monetary award February 3, 2005, at LabAutomation2005 in San Jose (CA, USA).

A panel of 11 experts in laboratory techniques will handle the judging of the award. The judges will conduct preliminary screening of abstracts prior to the conference, then conduct rigorous evaluation and select the winner while on site at the meeting. Since ALA is an international organization, podium presenters from countries outside the United States will be eligible for the prize as well as U.S. presenters.

"To our knowledge, this is the first time an award of this magnitude has been established in this sector that is funded solely by a nonprofit organization,” said chief administrative officer, Greg Dummer.

ALA has also announced the discontinuation of LabFusion, the Boston-based conference and exhibition focused on laboratory technology applications in the biopharmaceutical industry. "While LabFusion's content resonated within the global scientific community, we think we can accomplish more and provide even greater educational value by building on the core strengths of LabAutomation, now and into the future,” remarked Peter Grandsard, Ph.D., ALA president.




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