According to the Eurachem rules, at the 34th General Assembly, held in Dublin on 17 and 18 May 2018, the Chair, David Milde (Palacky University in Olomouc, Czech Republic) handed over the Chairmanship to the Vice-Chair, Marina Patriarca (Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Italy) for her two-year term as Eurachem Chair. At the same time, the General Assembly elected Vicki Barwick (LGC, UK) as the new Vice-Chair. The Eurachem Secretariat, ably held by Joanna Znaleziona – Hadrová, Eurachem Czech Republic, was handed over to Francesca Rolle, Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica (Italy).

The new team, Marina Patriarca, as Chair, Vicki Barwick, as Vice-Chair and David Milde as Past-Chair, will co-ordinate the work of Eurachem and the Eurachem Executive Committee for the next two years. The main challenge ahead will be to support analytical laboratories facing the transition to the revised ISO/IEC 17025, by continuing to promote open discussion of common problems and the development of informed and harmonised approaches to technical and policy issues.

Marina Patriarca, Chair, Eurachem

Marina is a Senior Scientist at the Italian National Institute of Health and has worked at the Institute since 1988. Her areas of work experience include analytical chemistry, clinical biochemistry and food safety. She is currently coordinating the activities of the Italian National Reference Laboratory for Heavy Metals in Food and the Network of Organisers of External Quality Assessment Schemes for Occupational and Environmental Laboratory Medicine. A key focus of her activity was the application of metrology to analytical sciences, from assessing reference materials, to organizing proficiency tests and providing specific guidance. She is an experienced trainer, at national and international level, on technical issues related to ISO/IEC 17025 and ISO/IEC 17043, and was a member of the Editorial Board of the TrainMiC (Training in Metrology) project from 2006 to 2011. Author of more than 100 scientific publications, she is a member of the Atomic Spectrometry Updates Board.

Marina has represented Italy in Eurachem since 2005 and contributes to the Eurachem Working Groups on Education & Training, Method Validation and Proficiency Testing. She was elected to the Executive Committee in 2009. She is currently chairing the recently formed Working Group on Reference Materials, with the task to revise current Eurachem guidance.

Addressing the General Assembly, Marina said: “This is a great honour for me. Over the years I have done the best I could to contribute to Eurachem progresses and I will continue to do so, with the help of Vicki and David, from a different and wider perspective. I am also proud to be a woman elected Chair, as with this choice Eurachem clearly indicates its will to promote and encourage fair sharing of top level responsibilities, in line with the policies of the European Union”.

Vicki Barwick, Vice-Chair, Eurachem

After graduating with a degree in Chemistry from the University of Nottingham(UK) in 1990, Vicki joined LGC (then known as the Laboratory of the Government Chemist) as an analytical chemist. In this role she was responsible for the chemical analysis of consumer goods (including cosmetics, toys and childcare items) to ensure product safety. In 1995 she joined a team working on the government-sponsored Valid Analytical Measurement programme. A particular interest around that time was the development of approaches for evaluating measurement uncertainty in chemical measurement. One of the outputs of this work was a training course on uncertainty estimation, targeted at analytical chemists. This led to the development of a programme of courses on analytical quality which has been running for 20 years. Vicki is currently the head of the commercial training team at LGC and is responsible for the management, development and delivery of training courses on analytical quality assurance including method validation, measurement uncertainty and statistics.

Vicki has been actively involved with Eurachem since 2005. She has been Chair of the Education and Training Working Group since 2010 and a member of the Method Validation Working Group since 2012.

Vicki said “I am honoured to have been elected Vice-Chair of Eurachem. I look forward to working with Marina and David to deliver Eurachem’s aims over the coming years. I have learnt a lot through my participation in Eurachem activities and I am happy to have the opportunity to contribute to the continued success of the network.”

David Milde, Past Chair, Eurachem

David is an Associate Professor of analytical chemistry at Palacky University in Olomouc (Czech Republic). After completing a Master of Science degree at the University of Chemistry and Technology Prague (1996), David started his PhD studies in the area of atomic spectrometry at Palacky University. His research and teaching activities are focused on spectrometry (AAS, ICP-MS, laser ablation, hyphenated techniques), chemometrics and metrology in chemistry. He is an author of about 35 scientific papers. He is currently chairing Eurachem Czech Republic.

David has been involved with Eurachem since 2006. He has been a member of the Executive Committee since 2008 and a member of the Education and Training Working Group since 2009. David served as Vice-Chair (2014 – 2016) and Chair of Eurachem (2016 – 2018).

David said “For me it was a great honour and also a challenge at the same time to chair for two years an organisation like Eurachem. I have been gaining new knowledge from workshops, breakout sessions and discussion fora since 2006, when I joined for the first time a Eurachem meeting as a newcomer and a young metrology in chemistry enthusiast. I will be very happy to support the new Chair in every possible way.”

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Published: Wednesday, 04 July 2018 22:16

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