BioTools Inc. Co-founder Professor Laurence Nafie Receives Major Scientific Award
Jupiter, FL, 2nd March 2014 — BioTools Inc. congratulates its Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer, Professor Laurence Nafie on being awarded the coveted 2014 New York Society for Applied Spectroscopy (NYSAS) Gold Medal for outstanding contributions to the field of Applied Spectroscopy.
“In his role as co-founder and CSO of Biotools, Laurence (Larry) has brought his expertise to bear in the development of our Vibrational Circular Dichroism (VCD) and Raman Optical Activity (ROA) technologies and this has enabled BioTools to develop and manufacture the most advanced instruments based on these techniques. We are delighted for Larry whose contributions to his field have been so outstanding and his recognition for his achievements is highly deserved” said Dr. Rina Dukor, President of BioTools.
“It is a great honour to be awarded the NYSAS Gold Medal for 2014 and to be amongst a prestigious group of past winners of this conveted award” said Professor Nafie.
The technologies of VCD and ROA commercialized by BioTools are used extensively in a range of applications to help advance the understanding of the role chirality plays in areas of drug development. Applications such as Absolute Configuration Determination and High Order Structure Determination in both small and biological molecules respectively are an essential part of the discovery and development of new medicines to help meet the challenge faced by many working in the pharmaceutical sector. The technologies are used to obtain high quality data about chirality early in the discovery of new molecules. Researchers are able to make decisions that will help determine the success or failure of the molecules in achieving clinical efficacy and safety which is underpinned by pressure from market regulators.
About BioTools Inc – http://btools.com/
BioTools is an established recognized leading international business that develops, manufactures and markets a range of advanced Chiroptical Spectroscopic instruments. It is the first company to commercialize both the techniques of Vibrational Circular Dichroism (VCD) and Raman Optical Activity (ROA) under the brand names ChiralIR-2XTM, ChiralRaman-2XTM. It also offers an FT-IR and RAMAN platforms for applications in structural determination of Biologics. BioTools has extended its business to include a fee paying analytical service from a number of Centers for Chirality around the world.
About Professor Laurence Nafie:
Laurence A. Nafie received his Ph.D. from the University of Oregon in 1973, studying resonance Raman scattering, and from 1973 to 1975 he was a postdoctoral associate at the University of Southern California, where he confirmed the discovery of infrared vibrational circular dichroism (VCD). In 1975 he jointed the chemistry faculty at Syracuse University where he carried out research in VCD and Raman optical activity (ROA) until his retirement as Emeritus Distinguished Professor in 2010. He performed the first measurement of VCD using an FT-IR spectrometer in 1979 and the first measurement of scattered circular polarized ROA in 1988, the methodology used for all commercially available VCD and ROA instruments. He has received numerous awards including an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (1978), the Coblentz Award (1981), the Bomem Michelson Award (2001), the William F. Meggers Award (2001), Fellow of the Society of Applied Spectroscopy (2008), and the Pittsburgh Spectroscopy Award (2013). In 1996 he co-founded BioTools, Inc. for the commercialization of VCD and ROA spectrometers. In 2010 he became Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Raman Spectroscopy in 2010 and in 2011 published a book entitled Vibrational Optical Activity: Principles and Applications. He has over 300 publications and several patents.
Media contacts:
Deborah Cockerill at deborah@sciad.com, +44 (0)7930 317729
Richard Anderson at richard@sciad.com, +44 (0)7973 950376
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