Applied Spectroscopy Practica: Peter Griffiths Award

This award is named in honor of legendary Society for Applied Spectroscopy member, SAS President, and long serving Editor-in-Chief and Editor of Applied Spectroscopy, Professor Peter Griffiths. This annual award, consisting of a monetary honorarium, an engraved award, and a one year complimentary SAS membership, is presented to the authors of the best paper published annually in Applied Spectroscopy Practica. Financial support from the Shimadzu Corporation, Peter Griffiths, and others will ensure the award’s longevity within the suite of impactful Society for Applied Spectroscopy awards for many years to come.

 

2026 Award Winner

The award selection committee are excited to announce that Dr Sara Fraser-Miller, Flinders University, Australia, and co-authors Mitchell C. Chalmers, Teemu Tomberg, and Keith Gordon, were recently selected as the first recipients of the Peter Griffiths Award for their paper “Discriminating Model Microcalcifications Immersed and Under Varying Depths of Wax Using Deep Low-Frequency Raman Spectroscopy” in Volume 2, Issue 4 of Applied Spectroscopy Practica. Journal Editor-in-Chief Dr Mary Kate Donais says of this research, “The scientific rigor, novelty, and potential impactful of this award-winning work made it an immediate standout among the manuscripts considered.  We congratulate Dr Fraser-Miller and her team for their outstanding work and achievement.”

 

Sara Fraser-Miller

Sara Miller’s obtained her PhD from Otago University, New Zealand, in 2014 under the guidance of Professor Keith Gordon on the topic of analytical applications of Raman spectroscopy. She undertook postdoctoral research roles at Helsinki University, Finland and Otago University, New Zealand on research areas related to pharmaceutical analysis and primary produce, respectively. Latter in her time at Otago University she obtained independent funding in the area of multi-spectroscopic analysis of coeliac disease. In November 2023 she took up the role of Lecturer in Analytical Chemistry at Flinders University, South Australia. Her current research interest focuses on the use of vibrational spectroscopic approaches to the analysis of pharmaceutical and biomedical applications.  

Keith Gordon

Keith Gordon received his BSc Hons (I) in 1986 and PhD in 1989 in chemistry from Queens University, Belfast, UK.  His PhD research, under the direction of Professor John J McGarvey, focused on laser spectroscopy of solar energy compounds.  He was awarded a Director’s Fellowship at Los Alamos National Laboratories, USA, and worked with Professor W H Woodruff from 1989 – 1992 on ultrafast laser spectroscopy of biological systems and solar energy materials.   In 1993 Keith took up a lecturing post in the Chemistry Department at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, becoming Professor in 2009 in that department; he was Head of the Department until 2020.  Keith was President of the New Zealand Institute of Chemistry in 2006 and is a founding Principal Investigator in the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology and the Dodd-Walls Centre for photonic and quantum technologies.  Keith is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand, the Royal Society of Chemistry and the New Zealand Institute of Chemistry.  Keith’s research interests focus on the understanding the properties of conducting polymers, nanostructured electromaterials, such as found in dye-sensitised solar cells, dairy products and pharmaceuticals using spectroscopy and computational chemistry.

Teemu Tomberg

Teemu has a strong background in optical instrumentation based on laser spectroscopic techniques. He obtained is PhD from the University of Helsinki (Finland) in 2020, where his work at the Department of Chemistry focused on the development of ultra-sensitive trace gas detection methods based on photo-acoustic and interferometric techniques. For his postdoctoral research, Teemu stepped to the Faculty of Pharmacy to expand his skillset in the field of non-linear optical spectroscopy and imaging with focus on coherent Raman microscopy and its applications in pharmacy. Currently, he is a University Researcher at the University of Helsinki with a role as the main developer and operator of a new Molecular Spectroscopy for Life Sciences -infrastructure.
Photo credits: Veikko Somerpuro 

Mitchell Chalmers

Mitchell Chalmers is a confirmed PhD candidate at the University of Otago Department of Chemistry under professor Keith Gordon and Dr Sara Miller.  Having obtained his MSc in medical physics from the University of Canterbury in 2020, his interests revolve around the diagnosis of cancer with his research focusing on Raman spectroscopy for biomedical applications.