Duncan Graham Named Recipient of Coblentz Society's 2012 Craver Award

The Coblentz Society and the Federation of Analytical Chemistry and Spectroscopy Societies (FACSS) recently named Professor Duncan Graham of the University of Strathclyde (Glasgow, Scotland) as the recipient of the Coblentz Society’s 2012 Craver Award. The award is presented in recognition of Graham’s pioneering work in surface- enhanced Raman scattering to generate ultrasensitive and highly selective methods of detection for a range of analytes, especially bioanalytical targets.

Graham received his BSc honors in chemistry from the University of Edinburgh in 1992 and his PhD in bioorganic chemistry in 1996. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Strathclyde, where he examined the use of surface enhanced resonance Raman scattering for DNA analysis with Zeneca Diagnostics. In 2002, Graham won the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Analytical Grand Prix. In 2004, he was awarded the SAC Silver medal for the innovative synthesis of new analytical reagents for sensitive and selective analysis, and in 2005 he was presented with the Nexxus Young Life Scientist of the Year award. Graham was awarded the Corday Morgan prize of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2009, and a Royal Society Wolfson Merit Award in 2010. He has published more than 150 papers and holds 13 patents.

The Craver Award will be presented at the FACSS annual meeting, SciX to be held in Kansas City, Missouri, from September 30 to October 5. At the conference, Graham will present the Coblentz Society’s Craver Award Plenary Lecture in Applied Vibrational Spectroscopy. A separate half-day award symposium of five invited presentations will be held following his lecture.

The Craver Award was created in 2006 by the Coblentz Society to recognize the efforts of young professional spectroscopists who have made significant contributions in applied analytical vibrational spectroscopy. The Coblentz Society named the award for Clara D. Craver, in recognition of her pioneering efforts in promoting the practice of infrared vibrational spectroscopy and her many years of service to the Coblentz Society.