Speakers,
but scientists
above all.
Discover their
background.

Noemí Santiago Sánchez
Labaqua

Noemí Santiago Sánchez has developed her career mainly in Labaqua (Spain) but also in European pharmaceutical companies and research centres. She is an expert in analytics for the determination of pollutants in environmental samples and expert in gas chromatography and mass spectrometry techniques.

Her experience is based especially on the development and validation of new chromatographic methods for the determination of organic pollutants in environmental matrices by extraction techniques as SBSE, LLE, SPE, P&T and analysis by GC-MS, GC-MSMS, GC-FID and GC-ECD. Currently she is involved in the automatization of analytical processes of chromatography analysis in order to improve the productivity of the company.

She has participated in R & D + i spanish and European projects. She has scientific publications in international journals in the field of environmental monitoring and analysis and has made presentations at national and international conferences.

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Catherine Brasseur
Certech

Catherine Brasseur obtained her PhD in Analytical Chemistry at the University of Liege, under the supervision of Professor Jean-François Focant. Her thesis research included a research stay at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta.

From 2014 to 2017, she worked at the European Technology Center of ExxonMobil in Machelen, in the Advanced Characterization Department, as Supervisor of the Chromatography Laboratory.

She joined the Certech in 2017, as Senior Analytical Chemist. The main areas of expertise of Catherine Brasseur are comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, as well as sampling and analytical techniques for volatile organic compounds. Covering multiple fields of application such as biological samples, environment, air quality and material emissions.

Yvon Gervaise

Yvon Gervaise, Engineer (INSCIR-INSA), after 32 years at the helm of the SGS Laboratory in Rouen, founded E.S.C (ExpertScience-Consulting) in 2021.

He teaches M2 Chemistry at universities and engineering schools. Since 2018, he has been a full member of the Rouen Academy of Sciences, Belles Lettres and Arts.

A forensic chemist and French expert to the OECD, Yvon has also held a directorship of COFRAC (the French Accreditation Committee) and was re-elected Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of INSA (Institut National des Sciences Appliquées) de Rouen at the end of 2019.

Yvon particularly follows and studies the latest developments in Artificial Intelligence and its applications. He is a member of the Board of Directors and moderator of the GT #Laboratoire du Futur of the SECF ( Société des Experts Chimistes de France ) and his activities are listed on the website expertscience.fr

David Benanou
DEST, Veolia

David Benanou, an expert in innovation and analytical research, joined the Veolia Research Center in 1990. He is specialized in sample preparation techniques, mass spectrometry and the concept of green analytical chemistry.

His field of expertise is mainly dedicated to organic micropollution and to the characterization of organic matter in environmental matrices, in materials in contact with these matrices and of all materials that can be valorized for the Veolia group.

Engineer graduated by the State in 2000, he has actively participated in many European projects. He was also a member of the CEN - European Committee for Standardization - commission on micro organic pollution in sludge, a member of the International Water Association (IWA), specialized in the field of taste and odor of drinking water and chlorination by-products. He is one of the administrators of the Certech research center and a member of the scientific council of the Ellona company.

Promoter, among others, of the SBSE technique applied to a wide variety of matrices and organizer of the SBSE Workshop since 2011, he is also co-author of several patents concerning on-line enrichment systems based on this technique and of numerous scientific papers.

Christophe Pérès
Le Labo Durable

Christophe Pérès began his career at the Research Institute for Chromatography in the analytical instrumentation sector. Under the prestigious direction of Prof. Pat Sandra and Frank David, he deploys state-of-the-art solutions in a wide variety of fields: agri-food, environment, health, fragrance, automotive, military… In 2009, he specialized in the cosmetics sector and became Head of Fragrance Analytical Research at Chanel. During these years, he tried to introduce new analytical methodologies and improvements in data treatments to help analysts to get more efficient and robust strategies. He was involved in many national and international interprofessional groups.

In 2019, concerned about the delay of the analytical sector in eco-design and the consideration of societal challenges, he co-founded The Green Analytical Project, a think-tank dedicated to raising analytical chemical players awareness to environmental issues.

In 2021, he staffed young multidisciplinary experts to create LE LABO DURABLE, a R&D and consulting company specialized in environmental impact evaluations and supporting laboratories in their ecological transformation.

Shane STEVENS
Restek Corporation

Shane STEVENS has over 17 years of experience at Restek in LC and Sample Preparation. His contributions span in-house silica particle manufacturing, laboratory design, development of solid phase extraction and LC column products, and application method development.

For the past four years, Shane has focused on developing coated blade spray (CBS) technologies including manufacturing and quality control testing systems, mass spectrometer interfaces, automation instrumentation, and application workflows for drugs in biological matrices.
Shane is the primary designer of the electronics and software integrating a liquid handling robot into the CBS workflow to perform automated sample preparation and introduction to the MS for analysis.

Shane’s other skill areas include software/firmware development as well as electromechanical design and data science. Shane received his BS in Chemistry from the Pennsylvania State University and is first inventor of two patent applications covering CBS design features.

Ismahane REMONNAY
DEST, Veolia

Ismahane REMONNAY have a chemistry master and INSEAD business management certificate, she is the head of prospective and partnerships for Veolia in the R&D Direction, and led the prospective program “Chemical Transition Pathway” since 2020, including the development and test of the design tool, including the “safe and sustainable by design” approach. She is also in charge of global regulatory affairs for chemicals (including market authorisation).

During 10 years, Ismahane was responsible for the Regulatory Affairs & Risk at Veolia Water Technologies for chemicals and equipment designed for water and waste treatment. During this period, she designed and implemented a ZHCD Zero Hazardous Chemicals Discharge program. Through this initiative, she developed a scoring method for assessing raw materials used in water treatment processes (OSOM, One Scoring for One Mixture) and Sustainable Chemicals Portfolio Management (SPM).

She is also part of the discussion group regarding “Beyond 2020”, the next step of The Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM) for the future framework for the sound management of chemicals and waste.

Émilie Usureau
DSM-Firmenich

Emilie Usureau is an engineer chemist graduated from the Graduate school of Chemistry, Biology and Physics of Bordeaux, France.

She joined the DSM (Dutch State Mines) Center in Delft, the Netherlands in 2017, now DSM-Firmenich. Her main areas of expertise are in lipidomics by Flow Injection Analysis, Gas chromatography and head space sample preparation techniques for volatile organic compounds and High-Resolution Mass spectrometry detectors.

Damien STEYER
Twistaroma

Damien STEYER is a biotechnology engineer (ESBS - École Supérieure de Biotechnologie de Strasbourg) with a doctorate in biochemistry. To carry out his thesis work at INRA Colmar on the influence of yeast strains on wine aromas, he set up a technique using SBSE, which enabled him to carry out aromatic profiles of wine and oenological fermentations.

It was during this thesis that he adopted the Twister technique (SBSE) to free himself from the Institute's analytical techniques. In March 2011, he founded Twistaroma. This company offers its customers an innovative service for characterizing and identifying aromas and, more broadly, VOCs.
Twelve years later, TWISTAROMA has 6 employees, a full range of analytical equipment linked to separative sciences (GC/ToF/ODP, GC/MS, GC/SCD, UPLC/UV) and 6 on-line or off-line sample preparation robots (Multi Purpose System).

Damien STEYER is Managing Director of the company, which today has a portfolio of over 150 customers in the agri-food, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals sectors. Its clients entrust him with expert assessments as part of their R&D projects.

Céline FRANC
ISVV

Céline FRANCreceived her PhD in organic chemistry from Ecole Polytechnique (Palaiseau, France) in 2004. After a two year postdoctoral fellowship in Dublin (Ireland) studying asymmetric catalysis, in 2006 she joined the oenological research group at the University of Bordeaux (France) where she is now a research engineer in analytical chemistry.

As part of the analytical chemistry and sensory analysis team of the oenology research group, she is involved in developing new analytical methods using Stir Bar Sorptive Extraction, SPME-Arrow, or SPE followed by gas or liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry.

Her principal research projects revolve around pesticide residues in wine and other matrices of oenological interest. Additional projects include the development of analytical methods, in particular with SBSE-GC-MS, to quantify wine olfactory defects such as cork taint, musty-earthy, vegetal, pharmaceutical, and animal odours, as well as positive minty aromas participating in qualitative ageing bouquet of the wine. Most recently, she is involved in developing methods to track mousiness in wine, a defect of microbial origin.

Stéphane Dubant
Reach Separation

Stéphane Dubant received a training in organic synthetic chemistry followed by a PhD thesis on the chemical origin of life, but he quickly moved towards chromatography. He worked at Pfizer as a purification specialist (SFC, HPLC, CCC/CPC, nanofiltration) then at Waters and Agilent, providing expertise and support in liquid and supercritical fluid chromatography for analysis, extraction, and purification in various application areas. From these different work experiences, he kept a keen interest for supercritical fluids and in particular supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC).

For the past year, Stéphane has installed and been at the head of the purification and method development service laboratory of Reach Separations in Strasbourg with expertise in SFC, in particular for methodologies using pure CO₂ and with industrial scaling in mind.

From a personal point of view, Stéphane spends a lot of his free time in the kitchen, especially baking cakes (sometimes also using CO₂)! He takes a week off every October to attend the world's largest board game fair in Germany.

Jeff Focant
University of Liege

Jeff Focant is Full Professor at the Chemistry Department and Vice-Dean for research of the Faculty of Sciences at ULiege in Belgium.

Professor Focant mainly teaches in Faculties of Sciences, Medicine, and Veterinary Medicine. He leads the Organic and Biological Analytical Chemistry laboratory inside the Molecular Systems research unit and is an external consultant in Separation Sciences.

Expert in multidimensional GC coupled to MS, his team develops and validate analytical methods for the measurement of (semi)volatile molecules present in complex matrices. Research activities focus on solving real-life analytical challenges to serve the Society in general. Applications cover fields such as forensics, food control, health, petroleomics,...

Major recent activities include metabolomics (volatolomics, breathomics, lipidomics), especially oriented to biomarker discovery in medical applications. The team also specializes in developing advanced chemometric and data handling tools for feature selections, predictive model building, and validation over large data sets from multi-class studies.

Christophe Devos
RIC Technologies

Dr. Christophe DEVOS received his Ph.D. degree in Analytical Chemistry in 2007 from Ghent University. During his Ph.D. study he developed analytical methods for ultra-trace analysis of organometallic compounds in environmental samples that he then applied in a laboratory complying with GMP regulation.

He joined the RIC group (Research Institute for Chromatography) in 2005, located in Kortrijk, Belgium. There he initially was involved in the development and automation of novel sample preparation methods for gas chromatographic analysis.

Currently, he holds the position of Senior Scientist within RIC technologies, a brand of the RIC group focused on equipment and instrumental solutions where he develops and supports new analytical solutions and important market applications.

Xavier Poitou
Hennessy

In 2016, Dr. Xavier POITOU completed his doctoral thesis as part of the École doctorale Sciences de la vie et de la santé (Bordeaux), in partnership with the Oenology Research Unit; his work focused on contributing to the aromatic knowledge of red wines through the sensory and molecular approach to "vegetal, green" nuances linked to their origin.

In 2017, he joined Hennessy's research laboratory in Cognac as a research and development manager.

Within the same company, he became research and innovation coordinator and is now in charge of research and development, using high-tech separative science equipment and green enrichment techniques such as SBSE in his laboratory to characterize cognacs and their manufacturing processes.

Franck David
Groupe RIC Technologies

Dr. Frank DAVID received his PH.D degree in 1986 at the Laboratory of Organic Chemistry of the University of Ghent.

Since October 1986, he is R&D manager Chemical Analysis at the Research Institute for Chromatography (RIC) in Kortrijk under the direction of Prof. Dr. Pat Sandra. he is author of more than 100 scientific papers in different areas of separation science.

His expertise includes capillary gas chromatography, supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC), GC-mass spectroscopy (GC-MS), multidimensional chromatography and miniaturization and automation of sample preparation.

He is also consultant for instrument manufactures and for industrial laboratories in environmental, petrochemical, food, pharmaceutical and chemical industries. In this function he has a long experience in theoretical and practical training courses.

In addition, Frank David is also member of the scientific committee of the HTC (Hyphenated Techniques in Chromatography) symposia and of the organizing committee of ISCC (Riva del Garda, Italy).

Agnes CHARTIER
Université d'Orléans (France)

Doctor Agnes CHARTIER obtained her doctorate in 1987 from the University of LYON 1, in Dr Jean Louis Rocca's team, on the subject of the development and study of the chromatographic properties of multifunctional stationary phases and their application to the separation of PTH-amino acids by liquid chromatography.

She began her professional career in the Logan Chemistry Department at Utah State University, where she worked on low-cost white light sources; she then joined the Dupont Nylon Center in Texas, where she had the opportunity to develop analytical methods adapted to nylon reaction intermediates. Back in Utah, Agnes concentrated on developing and implementing new analytical methods for the analysis of nitrogen and phosphorus in aqueous media. Moving to Pittsburgh to join paint manufacturer Valspar as a senior chemist, she developed new analytical techniques in response to the requirements of regulatory agencies, FDA and EFSA, and provided analytical support to the resins and barrier-active plastics groups.

Returning to France in 2011, she joined the Institut de Chimie Organique et Analytique (ICOA UMR7311) at the University of Orléans as a Chargée de Recherches (CRCN), where she focused on developing new methodologies for the analysis and characterization of volatile and semi-volatile compounds extracted from plant material, as well as new stationary phases for two-dimensional gas chromatography (GC-2D) to improve selectivity and separation efficiency in the second dimension.

Rémy FULCHIC
Château Leoville las cases

Rémy FULCHIC holds a Diplôme d'Ingénieur des Travaux Agricoles specialized in viticulture and oenology, as well as a Diplôme National d'Oenologue obtained in Bordeaux.

He joined Château Leoville Las Cases in 2003 as Research and Development Manager. His responsibilities include studying the impact of new viticultural and oenological practices, as well as managing the Domaines Delon group's in-house analytical laboratory.

Since 2004, he has been involved in the development of analytical methods on two SBSE-GC-MS systems and one HPLC-MSMS. In GC-MS, and now GC-TOF since 2021, analyses are essentially linked to monitoring the microbiological stability of wines (determination of volatile phenols), and to preventing possible external contamination (determination of halophenols / haloanisoles and research into contaminants on materials that may come into contact with wine or that may be found in storage environments).

Beate Gruber
Lab Manager at Analytical and Material Science

Beate received her Ph.D. in 2016 from the University of Rostock (Germany). Her practical work focused on the application of multi-dimensional gas chromatography in the field of volatolomics and was carried out in the cooperation group ‘Comprehensive Molecular Analytics’ at Helmholtz Munich (HMGU, Germany).

She then worked as post-doctoral researcher in Belgium (Organic & Biological Analytical Chemistry, University of Liège) and the Unites States (Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Pennsylvania State University), followed by a position as research scientist at the Research Institute for Chromatography (RIC, Belgium). In 2019, Beate joined Analytical and Material Science at BASF SE (Germany).

Her expertise includes capillary gas chromatography coupled to various detection technologies (GC-FID, GC-MS, GC-VUV, GC-TEA, GC-EPED, etc.), multidimensional gas chromatography (GC-GC, GCxGC) and miniaturized sample preparation (SPME, NTME, TFME, SBSE, etc.) for trace analysis of volatile organic compounds.

Amélie Lagarde
Laboratory of Scientific Police

Amélie Lagarde, after obtaining her Master's degree in Control and Forensic Analysis from Claude Bernard University in Lyon, works at the LATLUMOX laboratory in Lyon (France), where she develops and validates analytical methods and sample preparation techniques., in particular for the investigation and assay of various compounds (ethanol and other volatiles, narcotics, xenobiotics, cyanides...) in connection with traffic offences, chemical submissions and cause-of-death investigations...

In 2016, Amélie joined the Service national de police scientifique (SNPS) in Paris as a toxicology engineer. There, she is head of the road safety section, equipment coordinator within the Chemistry Division and trainer of staff in analytical techniques such as LC/MS/MS, GC/MS, GC/MS/MS as well as miniaturized and automated sample preparation.

Jérôme Cotton
Nestlé Waters

Jérôme COTTON obtained his PhD in analytical chemistry in 2015 following a CIFRE thesis between the University of Paris Jussieu and the research center of the Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique (CEA) in Saclay. During his PhD, he specialized in screening of suspected molecules in environmental samples using high-resolution mass spectrometry by applying tools traditionally used in metabolomics for the life science studies. In particular, he applied this methodology to samples of honey, wine or water. He then put his experience for 2 years in a start-up: Profilomic in which he worked as a project manager.

In 2017, he joined the Nestlé group and more specifically the Nestlé Waters entity based in Vittel as a specialist of analytical development. Among other things, he is involved in the deployment of new analytical methods for the detection of molecules responsible of an off-taste or an off-odor to water.

In 2023, he took the responsibility of the analytical investigation and development team, whose missions are to monitor scientific bibliography and technology for the water testing and to develop new analytical strategies based on high-resolution mass spectrometry and new-generation data mining tools.