On April 22nd 2022, we celebrated the Ions and Photons in Analytical Science 2021 (IPAS2021) symposium at ETH Zurich. After a year’s delay due to the pandemic, we could finally enjoy a face-to-face event dedicated exclusively to analytical science. The symposium brought together ten international experts, many of them with ties to ETH Zurich, who […]

Celebrating Prof. Renato Zenobi at Ions and Photons in Analytical Science 2021

On April 22nd 2022, we celebrated the Ions and Photons in Analytical Science 2021 (IPAS2021) symposium at ETH Zurich. After a year’s delay due to the pandemic, we could finally enjoy a face-to-face event dedicated exclusively to analytical science. The symposium brought together ten international experts, many of them with ties to ETH Zurich, who lectured on state-of-the-art analytical methodologies and their applications.

The event was co-organized by Prof. Renato Zenobi and coincided with his 61st birthday. With this note we would like to express our gratitude -not only for organizing this event – but rather for his longstanding service to the analytical chemistry community.

Renato Zenobi is a Professor of Analytical Chemistry at the Organic Chemistry Laboratory at ETH Zurich. He received a M.S. degree from ETH Zurich in 1986, and a Ph.D. at Stanford University in the USA in 1990. This was followed by two postdoctoral appointments at the University of Pittsburgh (1990 – 1991) and at the University of Michigan (1991). Renato Zenobi returned to Switzerland in 1992 as a Werner Fellow at the EPFL, Lausanne, where he established his own research group. He became an Assistant Professor at ETH in 1995, was promoted to Associate Professor in 1997, and to Full Professor in 2000. From 2010 until 2020 he served as Associate Editor of Analytical Chemistry (American Chemical Society). He chaired the 2014 International Mass Spectrometry Conference in Geneva, Switzerland.

Zenobi’s research areas include laser-​based analytical chemistry, electrospray and laser-​assisted mass spectrometry, ambient mass spectrometry, and near-​field optical microscopy and spectroscopy. He has made important contributions to the understanding of the ion formation mechanism in matrix-​assisted laser desorption ionization-mass spectrometry, and to ambient ionization methods. He is well known for the development of analytical tools for the nanoscale, in particular TERS (tip-​enhanced Raman spectroscopy), a spectroscopic methodology with ≈ 10 nm spatial resolution. This extremely broad range of activities has made him one of the most influential contemporary analytical chemists.

For all this pioneering work he has received many awards, including the Thomas Hirschfeld Award (1989), an Andrew Mellon Fellowship (1990), the Ruzicka Prize (1993), the Heinrich Emanuel Merck-​Prize (1998), the Redwood Lectureship from the Royal Society of Chemistry (2005), the Michael Widmer Award (2006), an honorary Professorship at East China Institute of Technology (2007), the Schulich Graduate Lectureship (2009), an honorary membership of the Israel Chemical Society (2009), honorary professorships at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Changchun), at Hunan University, and at Changchun University of Chinese Medicine (2010), the Mayent-​Rothschild Fellowship (Institut Curie, Paris; 2010), the Fresenius Lectureship from the German Chemical Society (2012), the Thomson Medal (International Mass Spectrometry Foundation, 2014), the RUSNANO prize (2014), and the Fresenius Prize (German Chemical Society, 2015).

Regarding his mentoring role, he supervised 65+ Ph.D. students and 60+ postdocs/senior scientists. Some of his offspring play relevant academic and industrial positions in the field.

Thank you, Renato, for these outstanding contributions, and Happy Birthday!

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