Pittcon 2011, the world's premier conference and exposition, reports that 17,098 attendees participated in the annual Conference and Exposition, which was held in Atlanta, Georgia, March 13-18, 2011.  Twenty-five percent of the conferees in attendance were from 87 countries outside the United States.  A detailed summary of attendance is available at www.pittcon.org.  

Pittcon 2011 President Penny Gardner noted, "In a time when many  other shows are experiencing a decline in attendance, Pittcon's [attendance] is strong and steady, which tells us the economy is moving in the right direction."  She added "Many exhibitors commented to us that it was the best show they've had in years in terms of the number of generated leads for equipment purchases."  

The Exposition included 979 exhibiting companies occupying 2,059 booths showcasing their latest laboratory instrumentation, equipment and services across a broad range of applications and technologies, including separation sciences, mass spectrometry, spectroscopy, nanotechnology, laboratory automation and informatics.  There were 193 companies (19.7%) from 31 countries outside of the United States. This year, Pittcon welcomed 115 (11.7%) first time exhibitors.   

Exhibitors that participated at Sponsorship Level were Agilent, Dionex, Jasco, Millipore, Sigma-Aldrich, Shimadzu, Thermo Fisher Scientific, and Waters. Pittcon 2011 also recognized ABSciex for achieving a significant milestone as a 50-Year Pittcon exhibitor and for their continued commitment to Pittcon and the scientific community.  

In the past, media and conferees have often referred to Pittcon as one of the best global venues to network with colleagues, and this year was no exception. Opportunities for conferees to network with colleagues were abundant and included an international mixer, three exposition mixers, Conferee Networking Sessions, an onsite employment service, an exhibitor and distributor service complemented by an International Visitors Center, and a Twitter Café.  A mobile application, Pittcon 2011, was launched this year and was available for use before and during the conference and can be used as a post-event reference tool.

The comprehensive Technical Program included more than 2,000 individual presentations distributed among Invited Symposia, Organized Contributed Sessions, Achievement Awards, Workshops, and Poster presentations. More than 100 invited speakers addressed topics of global interest, including alternative and sustainable energy, homeland security, food and drug safety, environmental issues, new materials development, and bioanalytical techniques. Chad A. Mirkindelivered the plenary lecture, "Polyvalent DNA Architectures: New Modalities for Intracellular Gene Regulation and Detection"to a capacity crowd of 1,200 attendees. His talk focused on the rules that govern the use of modifying nanoparticles with oligonucleotides in biodiagnostics and intracellular gene regulation and sequence specific crystallization, high selectivity and sensitivity nucleic acid and protein detection, and "antisense" therapy.