The History of the International Symposium on
Microscale Separations and Bioanalysis
Originally established as the International Symposium on High Performance Capillary Electrophoresis (HPCE), the first event was held April 10 – 12, 1989 at the Park Plaza Hotel in Boston MA. The meeting was founded by Professor Barry Karger, Northeastern University, and sponsored by the Barnett Institute/Northeastern University and the Bay Area Chromatography Committee. This first meeting featured oral and poster presentations that discussed the principles of separation in capillaries under high electrical fields; instrumentation development; and applications of HPCE, particularly in biotechnology. A summary of this meeting was published in Analytical Chemistry - Anal. Chem., 1989, 61 (6), pp 413A–415A.
This symposium represented the point in time where capillary electrophoresis first branched off from the HPLC community, giving the technology the necessary focus at a time when CE instrumentation was first being commercialized. The meeting’s name was changed in its second decade to MicroScale Bioseparations (MSB), as interest and attendance expanded in the related techniques of capillary electrochromatography, nanoLC, microfluidic and Lab-on-a-Chip devices . The stylized logo captured the acronym MSB in a DNA helix motif given the prominent role that microseparations have played in DNA sequencing and early completion of the Human Genome Project. In order to further broaden the scope of the conference to a wider range of scientists, the organizing committee approved the acronym of MSB to refer to "Microscale Separations and Bioanalysis" in 2015 that will be used as the official conference name for MSB 2016 in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Canada.
Past conference dates and locations with the corresponding Chairpersons are listed below: