TIAFT Ljubljana YSC 2006 - Summary Report

August 27, 2006
Present: Nele Samyn, Sooyeun Lee, Serap Annette Akgur, Robert Kronstrand, Marc Le Beau, Frank Peters
Apologies: Dimitri Gerostamoulos

The young scientists' symposium was held at the Medical Faculty of the University of Ljubljana from 10.00-13.00 on Sunday morning. Approximately 45 young scientists attended the meeting and several were first and second year TIAFT attendants. All YSC members had prepared a short oral presentation but due to the interesting questions and in-depth discussions from the group, only four of them presented during the allocated time:

  • Robert Kronstrand presented a brief report on the SOHT workshop in Vadstena (Sweden) in May of this year and reviewed the basics of hair analysis (sampling, decontamination, segmentation, interpretation) and offered some advice from his own experience.

  • Frank Peters reminded everyone about the IATDMCT young scientists (www.iatdmct.org) and presented extensively the basics of method validation, with emphasis on interpretation and statistical analysis of results. He also showed a list of reference publications to use as a guideline for the proper validation of your new analytical method.

  • Marc Le Beau presented a specific method for the screening of MIVACURIUM and metabolites in post-mortem and clinical samples.

  • Serap Annette Akgur informed us about the importance and the requirements for the introduction of a per se legislation on DUID in Turkey.

The lunch was sponsored by Dade Behring and was kindly organized by Majda and her team.

In the afternoon, the YSC members met to discuss a few items. Marc had other obligations and could not be present during the meeting.

  1. The minutes of last years meeting were accepted.
  2. The TIAFT board has ratified all decisions proposed in the last years report except for the sponsorship of the awards. The YSC needs to continue finding the sponsor money for the three awards. The expenses of a light lunch will be covered by TIAFT; the YSC should submit a budget that has to be approved beforehand by the board. All committee members will help to look for sponsors and Frank and Robert offered to contact the representatives of the companies that were present in Ljubljana.
  3. The YS symposium was a success! There was excellent feedback from the group on the proposed topics and many questions came up that can be used as a basis for next year e.g. written guidelines for qualitative analysis, measurement uncertainty and accreditation. There was also a suggestion to find presenters for next year's symposium from outside the committee and contact them long before the next TIAFT meeting.
  4. Marc, Robert and Nele announced that they will leave the committee next year. To assure continuity and to introduce new potential members of the committee, it would be advisable to step down after the TIAFT meeting in Seattle.
  5. This year there were 16 oral contenders for the best oral, 11 for the best poster and 9 for the best paper. This high number of entries is exceptional and the committee has to work quite hard to come to a decision. It was agreed that the scoring sheets need to be changed and the criteria redefined. Frank has agreed to come up with a proposal.
  6. The system of 'marking' the posters in the competition and informing the moderators about the contenders for the orals has worked splendidly. The committee will try to ask at least one question for the oral presenters if there are no other questions.
  7. The eligibility of the submitted papers needs to be clearly defined i.e. the publication date needs to be specified. There is a proposal to take one month before the last TIAFT meeting until the deadline for the entries of the current TIAFT meeting, with the condition that the paper needs to be at least e-published and available to the scientific community.

Meeting started at 13:45, closed at 16:15.

TIAFT YSC Meeting 2006

Dr Nele Samyn
Secretary TIAFT YSC