About the Symposium


Chromatographic Society of India was founded in the year 2000 at Chennai by a few people interested to propagate the education of Chromatography and Mass Spectrometry. It is nice to see that CSI is has grown to be in its early teens. In the early days of the Society, the major focus was to bring in educational and training programs in the various chromatographic techniques. One of the major activities was to bring the recognized American Chemical Society (ACS) courses in capillary gas chromatography and HPLC to India. Thus, these courses were held by very experienced people such as Dr. Stuart Cram and Dr. Lee Polite from the United States of America. The trainings spread over a few years were held at Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad. To fortify the basic training programs, seminars and workshops by the expert in HPLC, Dr. John Dolan and in mass spectrometry, Dr. Graham Cooks were conducted. Over the past few years, CSI has conducted successful two day HPLC workshops in Mumbai, Bangalore, Ananthpur, Hyderabad, etc. CSI will continue to bring more and more such training on GC, HPLC, Mass spectrometry, etc. in the coming months into the various parts of the countries for the benefit of more and more students and practicing chemists.

The Essential Oils Symposium held in November 2010 in IIT-Bombay was a huge success with more than 300 delegates attending the symposium and more than 16 companies participating in the exhibition. On this occasion the eminent scientists such as Dr. S.C.Battacharya and Dr. Sukh Dev were felicitated with Lifetime Contribution Awards. In November 2012, a one day seminar on Bioanalysis was in Mumbai by the reputed scientists of this industry which was attended by more than 80 people. During this occasion, Dr. R.T.Sane was felicitated with a Lifetime Contribution Award. In November 2012, a two symposium on the developments of GC in the last few decades was conducted in BARC, which was attended by a few hundred scientists, industry chemists and students. On this Occasion, Dr. R.M. Iyer, who has been a pioneer in the research on GC and making an indigenous GC in India was honored with the ‘Lifetime Contribution Award”. In June 2013, for the first time, a one day symposium on Ion Chromatography was conducted at IIT-Bombay and on this occasion, a pioneer in the field of Ion Exchange Chromatography, Dr. Shripad Khopkar was conferred a “Lifetime Contribution Award”. This year in December, CSI is planning to conduct a two day symposium on Chromatography and Spectroscopy with major focus on Food and Pharma. During this symposium, Life Time Contributions Award will be conferred on Prof ( Dr) Pat Sandra from Belgium and Dr. A.V.Rama Rao from Hyderabad.

CSI has created this informative website for the use of students and chemists in the academia and industry in many ways. The objectives will be to create a knowledge based website that should contain the basic lessons of various chromatographic techniques, the applications of various techniques to different industrial applications, a site herpes zoster infection where people would be able to post some questions and those having the right answers can post it. The website should be also able to give some information about the important forthcoming events, the recent updates on the major techniques, new products that are introduced by various manufacturers, the sources where the different products can be obtained, etc. The manufacturers should be able to place their information of the products that they are making and the ways to contact them, the special promotions that they are running, the marketing programs such as seminars they are holding and the exhibitions that they are participating. The website should also serve as a media, where the members should be able to post their bio data for seeking a job opportunities and similarly where the employers can post their vacancies seeking suitable candidates.

CSI is also planning to have an honorary faculty of selected people from different areas of expertise and from different regions and they should be able to take turns in going to different colleges, universities and research centers to give lectures on different topics to students and chemists. This will surely increase the awareness of those interested in various techniques. CSI also would like to collaborate with different public and private laboratories, where it can conduct some hands on training. The prime idea will be that the people who are interested in courses in Chromatography and Mass spectrometry both theoretical and practical should be able to get these with the help of CSI. CSI is also interested in conducting symposia in different domains and possibly in different cities and bring in the best people from India and abroad. CSI also wants to conduct one day symposia in the field of Drug Discovery, Food and Beverages, Petroleum Petrochemicals. In addition, CSI is also interested to bring in Electronic E-Newsletter periodically and this has been christened as “Chromatography News”. This newsletter should contain the technological advances, the updates on the activities of CSI, chromatography market, product, etc.

CSI is also collaborating with ChromSoc, which is the Chromatography Society of UK and this has helped in getting access to the international publication “Chromatography Today” through our website. The website also has displayed the various symposia souvenir publications, where in there are very good articles pertaining to various interesting topics. Similarly we are co-operating with ChromAcademy of UK to bring their educational products to India through their appointed agents.

With all the above efforts, we are hopeful that, CSI will be able to make an impact with the student community, academic personnel and chromatography professionals from industries..