Spectroscopy Courses

Spectroscopy Courses Offered at Conferences

* Courses that have CSAS are offered and co-produced by the Coblentz Society and the Society for Applied Spectroscopy. Courses with SAS are produced bythe Society for Applied Spectroscopy and courses with the designation SciX are unaffiliated with either society.

** At EAS this course will also contain Understanding FT-IR Sampling – Improve your Spectra.

If you are a Coblentz member and teach a short course, please provide the information to office@coblentz.org for possible inclusion in this list.

CSAS 101: Introduction to Infrared, Raman and Near Infrared Spectroscopy

This course will present the origins of spectral bands in Infrared, Raman, and NIR spectra. This will start with a discussion of fundamental molecular vibrations and where these are present in mid-infrared and Raman spectra and explain how overtone and combination bands can appear in the NIR as well as in mid-infrared and Raman spectra. Some direct guidelines will be presented to show which transitions are allowed. This will not be a theoretical discussion that involves mathematics or quantum mechanics, but rather an understanding of the physical phenomena that led to the development of the mathematical approaches. A key issue to the collection of good spectra is an understanding how spectrometers work. Such topics include instrument components, resolution, spectral range, measurement sensitivity, instrumental effects on spectral lineshape, instrument sources of errors, and effects of mathematical manipulation of spectra.

CSAS 102: Searching Infrared and Raman Spectra

In a general sense, spectral searching is a simple operation. An unknown spectrum is presented to the search system software, the spectral databases are searched, and a result presented. This simple operation in no way explains how to optimize the process to arrive at the best, ideally the correct, identification. There is more than one search algorithm, so which one should be used? What if the unknown compound is not in the database? What if the unknown spectrum represents a mixture? How can we proceed to find these answers? This course will address these issues and more. Participants will be provided with a two-week trial copy of Wiley KnowItAll® Software to use during and after the course. It will not be possible to provide laptop computers for participants; therefore, the software will be made available to the participants shortly before the course so that it can be installed on a Microsoft Windows 10, or later, laptop computer.

CSAS 103: Collecting Infrared Spectra and Avoiding Pitfalls

Users of FT-IR spectrometers may have received little or no formal training in spectroscopy and therefore cannot distinguish between “good” and “bad” spectra.  In this course, we will show many of the problems that are commonly encountered with FT-IR spectra measured by inexperienced (and often experienced!) users and show how to avoid them.

CSAS 104: How to select, configure, and optimize Raman spectrometer for your application: from theory to practice

The purpose of this course is to familiarize a wide circle of experimenters with the fundamentals and applications of modern Raman spectroscopic techniques with the focus to confocal Raman microscopy and imaging. The basics of Raman spectroscopy, instrumentation, principles of operation, and the main characteristics of Raman spectrometers and microscopes will be presented in the course. Examples of the application of Raman microscopy for the characterization of spatial structure, composition, and properties of “real world” samples and objects with the emphasis on nanomaterial, polymer, pharmaceutical, cellular, microorganism, plant, and food product studies will be provided.

CSAS 105: Process Analytical Technology:  Out of the lab and into the Line

Process analytical technology (PAT) is a tool for product development, scale up and manufacturing of any chemical product.  In this course, you will learn about the benefits of in-process monitoring, how to justify and plan the analysis implementation.  We will discuss different PAT tools, how to choose them for your application and implementation. We will also discuss the benefits such as saving time and money, improving green scores and manufacturing proficiency.    Applications from various industries will be used to explain concepts and provide examples of implementation.

CSAS 106: Modern Portable Analytical Spectroscopy

Portable spectrometers are used for many purposes, including quality control and process analyses in industrial environments, and for scene-assessment in law enforcement, emergency response and military applications.  This hands-on course will cover the capabilities of modern portable spectrometers covering elemental spectroscopy (x-ray fluorescence and laser induced breakdown spectroscopy), molecular/optical (infrared and Raman), and mass spec/molecular (ion mobility and gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy).  Advantages, limitations and applications of each method will be detailed.  Attendees will be exposed to sampling and use of these systems during the hands-on exercises.

CSAS 107: Introduction to Quantitative Spectroscopy for Near Infrared and Raman Instrumentation

This hybrid course includes classroom lessons and live software demonstrations using Near Infrared and Raman data sets. The course content is based on industrial experience in developing methods to support product and process understanding, problem-solving, quality assurance testing, R&D innovation, and process monitoring and control.  Participants can observe live software demonstrations, ask questions, and learn how to develop quantitative methods.
Topics discussed include; types of sampling and measurement errors, procedure design, wavelength selection strategies, spectral preprocessing, quantitative techniques, and lifecycle procedure management.  Each lesson includes case study examples and software demos to emphasize key principles in spectral reproducibility, S/N, preprocessing, and modeling.

CSAS 112: Optimizing Microspectroscopy with Microscopy

Microspectroscopy is a unified combination of microscopy and spectroscopy for microanalysis.  Every aspect of microspectroscopy requires the understanding and application of the fundamental principles of microscopy and spectroscopy.  In this intensive one-day course, we concentrate on the fundamental understanding and application of the microscope in acquiring high quality spectral data.  Microscopy plays a critically important role in selecting a sample for analysis and defining the microscopic area for which to be analyzed.  The relationship between absorbance and illumination is dependent on the optical characteristics of the specimen (diffraction, dispersion, refraction, and reflection) and the optical characteristics of the microscope.

CSAS 113: Interpretation of Infrared and Raman Spectra

Infrared and Raman spectroscopy, NMR and Mass spectroscopy are essential techniques to elucidate chemical structure.   The success and popularity of NMR and mass spectroscopy have resulted in a general loss of institutional knowledge among most users of IR and Raman interpretation skills.  The ability to understand and identify functional groups by interpreting IR and Raman spectra is essential for successful use by end users of these vibrational spectroscopy techniques.

This two-day course provides an introduction to IR and Raman spectra.  The course content focuses on developing a fundamental understanding of group frequencies and how to apply this to determine molecular structure using both the IR and Raman spectra.  Lectures are supplemented with multiple well illustrated examples as well as in-class spectral problem sets under the guidance of highly experienced industrial spectroscopists.

CSAS 117 Laser Fundamentals for Spectroscopy

This course is designed to give attendees an introduction to the fundamentals of laser physics as well as a practical understanding of common laser designs and their applications in spectroscopy.   This course will begin by providing a fundamental understanding of the three basic components of a laser: gain medium, resonator, and excitation source.  You will learn how these components affect the laser characteristics that are important to spectroscopists, specifically, mode structure, spectral linewidth, pulse-width and average power.  Finally, attendees will be introduced to the pros and cons of common gas, solid-state, and diode laser designs as they apply to various spectroscopy applications.

CSAS 118: Technologies and applications for miniature optical spectrometers and spectroscopic sensors

In the past twenty years optical spectrometers have shrunk dramatically in size, giving us successively laboratory-portable, toaster-sized, instruments; cordless-drill-sized portable instruments for use in the field; and onto spectrometers the size of a computer mouse or deck of cards.  The latest development in portable spectroscopy is the availability of very low-cost multispectral sensors, the size of computer chips, leading to the possibility of embedding them into consumer goods.

Multispectral sensors can now not only be incorporated into ‘white goods’ like washing machines and dryers, but also into ‘fitness’ products like smart watches and sports watches, and as photonic miniaturization increases, into ‘wearables’ like smart rings, providing the user with health information. A variety of photonic components and technologies can be utilized for these miniature devices including silicon photonics and photonic integrated circuits (PICs), produced en masse using semiconductor manufacturing techniques; components from LiDAR including SPAD arrays; electronically-tunable detectors; and ‘photonic’, ‘plasmonic’ and ‘computational’ devices. This course surveys technologies and applications for miniature optical spectrometers and spectroscopic sensors.

CSAS 121:  Introduction to Data Analytics for Analytical Chemists

Are you curious about all the Data Analytics courses being offered online and don’t know how they might relate to your work? Do you have little to no experience with coding? Do you want to use easily accessible and FREE software for data analysis? This one-day course is for you! Students will be provided with an active-learning-based introduction to data analytics for analytical chemists using R and Excel. Course content includes data visualization, testing the significance of data, finding structure in data, and process automation. Worked examples will include data sets collected in undergraduate courses that could easily be adapted to teaching and research. Analysis of spectral data from automated multi-file consolidation to cluster analysis and principal component analysis will be walked through step by step with students. Students will leave with copies of all code and data used in the workshop and the confidence to take their data analysis to the next level. The course is geared for anyone, students to faculty to senior researchers, that wants to integrate coding into their work or teaching.

CSAS 124: What’s in the Box? How a Spectrometer Works

A spectrometer’s output is indistinguishable from the output of a video game unless the user knows what is going on inside and how the instrument’s behavior influences data generation and meaning. This short course gives an overview of spectrographs and interferometers to demystify the light-tight box and computations that reveal spectra. What are an instrument’s limitations? If one instrument can’t provide adequate dynamic range, resolution, measurement speed, or molecular insight, what other instrument might? If the signal is drowning in noise, is there anything you can do? Can an instrument have too much resolution? Why are interferometers more common for infrared absorbance measurements than for atomic emission? This course will provide some answers, suggest additional questions, and point you to sources that can illuminate your measurements.

CSAS 130: Beyond the Beer-Lambert Approximation: Towards evaluating Infrared Spectra based on Wave Optics and Dispersion Theory

The course starts at the points where conventional books about infrared spectroscopy end. Whereas the latter are based on the Bouguer-Beer-Lambert (BBL) approximation, the cornerstones of the evaluation of infrared spectra are wave optics and dispersion theory.

After an extended introduction about the merits and failures of the BBL approximation and related chemometrics, the gap between both levels of theory is bridged by a simplified introduction into wave optics and dispersion theory to allow a seamless transition from one to the other. Based on these foundations, the participants will be enabled to choose which level of theory is adequate for a particular problem at hand. The course will establish the fundament to allow them to pursue understanding and applying even more advanced treatments of infrared spectra. Those are based on matrix formalisms to calculate reflectance and transmittance and oscillator models to quantitatively evaluate infrared spectra including those of anisotropic or optically active samples from a (semi-) classical point of view

CSAS131 Current topics in Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy

Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) has always been seen as a strong elemental analytical technique thanks to the benefits of laser ablation and the inexpensive reliance on optical elemental spectroscopy. But with so many options in lasers, spectral analyzers, reference materials, analysis software, and configurations, it could be easy to obtain LIBS data that are not providing the correct information.

This short course will briefly review the important processes involved in LIBS, in order to understand what factors are important for your application. We will also work on how to use LIBS data considering the challenges that can pose laser ablation and emission spectroscopy in analytical chemistry. Finally, an overview of the up-to-date commercially available systems will be discussed.

CSAS 134:  Two-Dimensional Correlation Spectroscopy (2D-COS)

This is an introductory course on two-dimensional correlation spectroscopy (2D-COS), a spectral data analysis tool useful in various branches of scientific field.  This model-free technique is designed to sort out intricate changes of spectra of a system under some form of external perturbation, which contain rich information about the unique response behavior of individual moieties comprising the system.  It complements well with the traditional model-based chemometric techniques to be added to the toolbox of scientists.

In 2D-COS, a set of maps defined by two independent axes of spectral variables (e.g., wavenumbers, frequencies, wavelengths, or even chromatographic elution times) are generated by applying a special form of correlation analysis to a series of systematically varying spectra.  Some of the notable features of 2D-COS are: simplification of complex spectra consisting of many overlapped peaks, enhancement of spectral resolution by spreading peaks over the second dimension, establishment of unambiguous band assignment through correlation of bands selectively coupled by various interaction mechanisms, and determination of the sequential order of events depicted by changes in spectral intensities.

CSAS 116: ABC to PMP: A Project Management Crash Course

Project management – a term invoking both excitement and loathing to the experienced professional but to the unfamiliar, it might as well be a second language for a freshly minted scientist venturing out into the world.  For the average scientist, the fundamentals of project management are not found anywhere in their undergraduate or graduate level schooling, despite project management being used throughout scientific disciplines. Learning further about project management early in one’s career (or even a little later on) can help scientists understand the nuances to formal project management within their chosen discipline.

This course is not a substitute for formal project management training towards a Project Management Professional (PMP) certification, but aims to provide a half day of learning for attendees to understand how project management fundamentals influence all scientists in modern disciplines.  Attendees should leave the course having a firmer understanding of the influences of project management within all realms of scientific work