Łukasz Pieszczek, PhD, one of our staff members, has been honoured with a prestigious award by the Committee on Analytical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences for the best doctoral dissertation in analytical chemistry. The award recognises his contribution to advancing the principles of metrology and chemometrics in chemical measurements. The award ceremony for his doctoral thesis, “Advanced Imaging and Characterisation Approaches for Complex Samples Utilising the Advantages of Selected Spectroscopic, Chromatographic, and Chemometric Methods” took place during the 13th Polish Chromatographic Conference. The award was sponsored by the renowned British company LGC Standards, a global leader in providing equipment and solutions for analytical chemistry.
In the congratulatory letter, the Scientific Committee of the Polish Academy of Sciences justified its decision with the high level of the dissertation’s content, its innovativeness, and the global presence of its results in scientific literature. The committee acknowledged both the quality of the doctoral thesis and the scientific achievements of the author, reflected in published scientific articles.
The scientist’s doctoral dissertation represents a valuable and refreshing perspective on imaging techniques for laboratory samples. The instrumental techniques emphasised in the research are multi- and hyperspectral imaging, which were traditionally used in space and military technologies for remote sensing of large Earth areas. Nowadays, their applications are expanding to laboratories monitoring food, pharmaceuticals, and environmental samples.
The dissertation particularly emphasises utilising the chemical heterogeneity of samples to analyse complex mixtures of multiple chemical compounds, contributing significantly to the development of technological solutions based on hyperspectral imaging in the near-infrared range.
His research aligns perfectly with the contemporary trend of seeking new strategies for processing instrumental data and applying integrated analytical techniques involving imaging, spectroscopy, and chromatography. These studies aim to achieve a more detailed and comprehensive understanding of chemical changes in multicomponent samples (such as drugs, food, plastics, or environmental samples) routinely handled in laboratories.
The doctoral thesis was supervised by Professor Michał Daszykowski whose team conducted the scientific research being a part of the dissertation by Łukasz Pieszczek, PhD.
Detailed information about the research by Lukasz Pieszczek, PhD, can be found at the following link: opus.us.edu.pl.
Łukasz Pieszczek, PhD from the Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of Silesia in Katowice | photo: private archive of Łukasz Pieszczek, PhD