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Vol.
25 No. 2
March-April 2003
Where
2B &Y |
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Announcements
of conferences, symposia, workshops, meetings, and other
upcoming activities. |
Inaugural
Conference for the Southern and Eastern Africa Network of
Analytical Chemists
710
July 2003, Gaborone, Botswana
Since
1999, the analytical chemistry section of the University of
Botswana has annually organized twoday international analytical
chemistry workshops in the month of February. In the last
workshop, held on 25-27 February 2002 and funded by the Swedish
International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), delegates
representing 13 universities from 11 African countries agreed
that a pool of African expertise familiar with issues relating
to the African continent be established. This led to the formation
of the Southern and Eastern Africa Network of Analytical Chemists
(SEANAC). The main aims and objectives of SEANAC are as follows:
(a)
to create a database for providing information on human and
physical resources in the field of analytical chemistry, particularly
those available in the Africa region
(b)
to promote analytical chemistry in the southern and eastern
Africa region through collaboration, research, research training,
teaching and information sharing
(c)
to facilitate inventory, access, operation, maintenance, and
repairs of analytical equipment
(d)
to collaborate with local and international organizations
with similar aims
The
SEANAC inaugural conference aims to provide a platform for
African chemists to interact, exchange information, and network
among themselves and with international scientists. These
goals will be achieved by dedicating two days prior to the
conference for workshops in sample handling, chromatographic
techniques, data handling methodologies, presentations of
scientific results, and mentoring on issues of writing successful
research proposals. Experts, including Drs. Ron Majors and
Stuart Cram of Agilent Technologies, will offer such workshops.
The workshops will target graduate students, academics, chemists,
and technicians already working in industry.
With
the help of keynote speakers such as Profs. Darmia Barcelo
(II QAB CSIC, Spain), Lo Gorton (Univ. of Lund, Sweden), Erno
Lindner (Univ. of Memphis, USA), James Holcombe (Univ. of
Texas at Austin, USA), Jorge Torresdey (University of Texas
at El Paso, USA), Prof. Luc Nagels (RUCA, Belgium), and Omowunmi
Sadik (SUNY-Binghamton, USA), the conference program will
seek to demonstrate and facilitate the application of analytical
chemistry in the crucial areas of health, food security, and
the environment. Plenary lectures will be published in Pure
and Applied Chemistry and the rest of the papers presented
will be published in a special issue of the journal Talanta
following the normal review process.
After
the conference, delegates will have an opportunity to visit
the northern part of Botswana which is home to the world's
largest inland delta, the Okavango Delta. This is also home
to more than 40 000 elephants, and within 70 km of the Victoria
Falls.
See
Calendar for contact information
www.ub.bw/departments/science/seanac.pdf
Page last
modified 14 March 2003.
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