PhD student Joseph Teson won the prestigious Agilent Innovation Award for a Poster Presentation.
Several Wadsworth Center Research Scientists and their trainees attended the 2026 Winter Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry, held January 10-17, 2026, in Tucson, Arizona. Participants included Drs. Patrick Parsons, George Donati, and Christopher Palmer; Ms. Kayla Mehigan; and Dr. Sarah El Din, an APHL Postdoctoral Fellow. University at Albany doctoral students Deanna Luneau and Joseph Teson from Dr. Parsons’ laboratory also attended the meeting. The Winter Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry is a premier international forum that convenes leading scientists in analytical atomic spectrometry from federal and state public health laboratories, academic institutions, and commercial clinical laboratories. Held biennially, the conference highlights the latest methodological advances, emerging applications, and cutting-edge research in the field.
Dr. Patrick Parsons chaired a Heritage Lecture session and delivered an invited lecture titled “Mercury speciation in whole blood: why liquid chromatography with vapor generation coupled to ICP-MS is preferable to GC-ID-ICP-MS for biomonitoring studies.” Dr. George Donati taught a short course, “Some statistics applied to analytical chemistry using R and Microsoft Excel,” and presented a poster entitled “Multi-energy calibration and multi-isotope calibration to evaluate in vitro bioaccessibility and bioavailability of metals in fish from a mining region in Brazil.”
Members of Dr. Parsons’ laboratory presented two additional papers: “The New York State biomonitoring proficiency testing program for trace elements: a tool to improve interlaboratory harmonization for human exposomic studies,” presented by Ms. Kayla Mehigan, and “Trace element analysis of human placenta by tandem ICP-MS/MS: a comparison between formalin-fixed and paired fresh-frozen specimens for exposure assessment studies,” presented by Joseph Teson, a PhD student. Mr. Teson won the prestigious Agilent Innovation Award for a Poster Presentation.
Dr. Christopher Palmer delivered a presentation titled “Matrix-matched calibration strategies for trace elements in blood and urine by ICP-MS: integrating biomonitoring and occupational exposure studies.” Ms. Deanna Luneau, a PhD student in Dr. Parsons’ group, also gave a presentation entitled “Characterization of trace elements in four candidate caprine liver reference materials via an interlaboratory study.”
The conference, organized by the International Atomic Spectrometry Association, was highly successful and showcased the depth of expertise and leadership of New York State scientists in the field of analytical spectrochemistry.