2021 Awardee

  Ian received his B.Sc. in chemistry and chemical technology and his Ph.D. in Polymer Science & Spectroscopy from the University of Bradford, UK. While at Bradford, his Ph.D. covered the polymerization, characterization, and reactions of poly-dienes. During his Ph.D. studies he discovered a passion for the application of vibrational spectroscopy and had an opportunity to work with FT-IR, far-IR, Raman, micro-Raman, and hyper-Raman. He conducted experiments to couple a Raman spectrometer to a reactor using a flow-cell and investigated the coupling of Raman to a flow-cell as an optical composition analyzer for gel permeation (GPC) / size exclusion (SEC) chromatography. Outside of his Ph.D. work and with Professor Howell Edwards, his co-advisor, he investigated the application of Raman to arts & antiquities, bio-based lichen degradation, novel characterization of compounds for electronic purposes, the “disease” state of plastic dolls, and the impact of polymer solids and salts dissolution in water. 

  Ian postdoc-ed at the University of Idaho with Professor Peter Griffiths.  During his time there he contributed to the team that worked on projects for the DOE and FBI. These projects were part of efforts to assist in the environmental clean-up of nuclear processing facilities and the detection of explosives in the aviation transportation system.  During his years in Idaho, he started consulting with several Raman companies and started his scientific volunteering by organizing Raman sessions at the FACSS conference.

   In 1996, Ian joined Kaiser Optical Systems to support the development and implementation of Raman in industrial settings.  Ian currently holds the position of Director of Marketing and manages the marketing communications and product management groups at Kaiser. At Kaiser, he has worked with internal and external stakeholders to develop products, applications, and solutions to address the challenges of moving laboratory Raman-based analyses to reliable and transferable process control measurements. 

  During his career Ian has chaired the ASTM subcommittee on Raman (E13.08), has served as the Program Chair of FACSS in 2007 (Memphis) and as co-program chair of ICAVS 10 in 2019 (Auckland, NZ).  He has also served on the program committee or as a session organizer at FACSS, SciX, ICAVS, ICORS, and EAS, and as an invited speaker at the above conferences as well as Pittcon, and IFPAC.  Over the course of his career, he has organized or co-organized more than 200 technical sessions in addition to teaching short courses on Raman at conferences and at customer sites.

  Ian has publishing over 50 papers and 100 conference proceedings. He co-authored Handbook of Raman Spectroscopy: From the Research Laboratory to the Process Line, has authored or co-authored seven other book chapters, and co-authored the first USP general monograph on Raman Spectroscopy (USP-1120). He is a reviewer for numerous journals in analytical chemistry, is an editorial board member for Applied Spectroscopy, Spectroscopy, and American Pharmaceutical Review and has been a guest editor for special issues of Applied Spectroscopy and Vibrational Spectroscopy.

  Ian’s previously awards include the Charles Mann Award for Applied Raman from FACSS, elected as a Fellow of SAS (2011) and Fellow of RSC (2018), Distinguished Service Awards from both FACSS and SAS, and Honorary Membership from the Coblentz Society.